Alberta doctors turn down tentative agreement with government

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Alberta doctors have voted down a negotiated offer to settle their long-standing dispute with the government, sources told Postmedia early Tuesday evening.

At 10:30 pm, the Alberta Medical Association confirmed that members voted 53 per cent to 47 per cent against the deal. Turnout was 59 per cent of about 11,000 doctors eligible to vote.

The announcement was scheduled for Wednesday morning but released sooner because of the “early media coverage.”

AMA president Paul Boucher said; “I know this was a difficult decision for many.

“The questions now are: What comes next? How to we deal with these issues without an agreement?

“I have reached out to the minister (Tyler Shandro) and we will meet soon to begin priority discussions.”

His priorities include “physician supply, ensuring Albertans have access to the physician they need,” and “the sustainability of community practice.”

Boucher said overall challenges include “the fragile economy, changes arising from new health legislation and a third wave of COVID-19 as the care deficit caused by the pandemic continues to grow.”

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The AMA board had tentatively approved the deal, subject to the member vote.

The government negotiated one of its key demands, an annual budget cap of $4.571 billion on physician pay.

Although the agreement has never been made public, sources previously told Postmedia there would have been no overall spending increases in the first two years of a four-year contract.

The budget would have risen by one per cent in each of the final two years.

Mistrustful after last year’s conflicts, doctors negotiated a promise from government to bring in legislation saying the deal could not be cancelled.

On Feb. 20, 2020, the UCP unilaterally terminated its previous master agreement with doctors.

But some doctors against the proposed new agreement believed nothing would prevent Health Minister Shandro from cancelling another one.

Many physicians were also upset that the agreement did not include provisions for binding arbitration.

The doctors won some significant points in negotiations, including a promise that any new initiatives from the government would not be funded from the proposed budget, but with new money.

They also won back funding for AMA-administered benefits that seemed to be threatened — maternity leave, medical liability insurance, medical education, and the physician and family support program.

Clearly aware that the deal was in trouble, Shandro made some separate peace offerings recently.

In the legislature last week, he said: “Changes to complex modifiers was a policy that we never should have pursued in the first place, and there will be no changes being made going forward.”

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Last year, Shandro proposed changes to these modifiers that allow doctors to bill for extra time with patients who have complex needs.

He cancelled that change after doctors rebelled.

On March 24 Shandro also send a conciliatory letter to all doctors. But for some, it backfired. They found the letter to be insincere and a sign of desperation.

The heated public rhetoric cooled early this year as the AMA and the government began serious negotiations.

But it appears that the agreement collapsed both because of terms the voting physicians didn’t like, and the profound bitterness that lingers from the past year’s disputes.