Progress Amid Pressure: SGFP's Year-End Review & 2025 Focus

Dear SGFP Members,

Year in Review

As we begin 2025, we want to reflect on our collective work in 2024 and share our progress in addressing the challenges facing family medicine in Ontario. Despite the significant pressures you face, your ongoing dedication to patient care continues to drive our mission to create meaningful change in Ontario's healthcare system.

The Crisis in Family Medicine: Current State

The challenges facing family medicine have intensified this year. The 2024 CaRMS first-round results showed a concerning decline in the number of medical students choosing family medicine.

Many of you have shared stories of unsustainable workloads, administrative burdens, and the strain of meeting increasing patient needs. We know family doctors are managing more complex patients, administrative tasks that take away from direct patient care, and compensation that does not reflect the workload. This reality is particularly acute in Northern Ontario, where our recent visits revealed many challenges, from restrictive remuneration to gaps in the health workforce across numerous communities and infrastructure issues like safe roads. These compound the difficulties of delivering primary care.

Compensation and Financial Progress

We've achieved several important gains while continuing to push for fair compensation:

• Our advocacy highlighting the family medicine crisis helped shape the OMA arbitration brief, leading to a historic 9.95% award for Year 1 of the 2024-2028 PSA
• Strongly advocated for 100% relativity-based allocation, resulting in a significant win with a 75/25 split favouring relativity-based payments
• Secured a significant victory with the Return on Education (ROE) review, which better recognizes the value and complexity of family medicine training in compensation formulas, and will be reflected in relativity going forward
• Worked with Tariff Lead Dr. Salesh Budhoo to provide regular updates on billing codes
• Continued advocacy for addressing the gender pay gap in family medicine
• Maintained focus on preventive care bonuses and eligible claims
• Pushed for recognition of the complex nature of family medicine in compensation models

Direct Engagement and Northern Ontario

Our commitment to regional engagement took concrete form through:

• Executive team in-person visits to Thunder Bay, Atikokan, Dryden, and Marathon and virtual visits with family physician colleagues in Wawa, Thessalon/Bruce Mines, and Rainy River
• Direct observation of innovative local solutions to systemic barriers and specific challenges like poor infrastructure and unreliable connectivity affecting healthcare delivery
• Commitment to holding executive meetings in various communities twice yearly

Strengthening Our Voice

To respond more effectively to these challenges, we've made significant organizational changes that strengthen how we work on behalf of members:

• Streamlined our executive to seven directors from twenty to enable faster, more decisive action
• Formed three family physician-led operational teams to have more members informing the day-to-day work and impact of SGFP in Tariff, Policy & Advocacy, and Digital Health
• Expanded our media presence, resulting in hundreds of media mentions and becoming a go-to voice for family medicine issues
• Established regular Chair's Letters to keep you informed of our advocacy work
• Strengthened relationships working directly with the Board Chair, OMA CEO and OMA staff to elevate the priorities necessary to family physicians

Policy Leadership and Future Vision

While stabilizing family medicine through improved remuneration remains crucial, we're simultaneously building for the future with an eye to influencing provincial policy priorities. This year's achievements include:

• Development and endorsement of three pivotal policy papers aligned with our strategic vision
• Active involvement in over 10 external policy reviews, providing critical family physician input on scope changes and form modifications
• Collaboration with OMA, OCFP, and other healthcare organizations to strengthen family medicine's voice

Gender Equity and Workforce Retention

We've maintained focus on crucial workforce issues:

• Active advocacy for addressing the gender pay gap in family medicine
• Development of specific retention strategies for rural and northern communities
• Support for improved practice models that promote work-life balance
• Advocacy for better support structures in underserved areas

Looking Ahead

As we move into 2025, SGFP remains committed to:

• Addressing the critical shortage of family doctors
• Supporting northern and rural practice sustainability
• Reducing administrative burdens
• Ensuring fair compensation across all practice models
• Strengthening family medicine's leadership role in healthcare
• Continuing our regional engagement initiatives

PPC Reminder

SGFP is actively involved in the Physician Payment Committee (PPC) process to develop new proposals for the permanent Schedule of Benefits changes coming in April 2026. Given the historical increase in the arbitration award, the SGFP tariff team needs your feedback to shape our new PPC proposals and ongoing advocacy priorities. We have extended the deadline for this important survey by two days; please complete it by midnight on Wednesday, January 8, 2025. The survey will take approximately ten (10) minutes to complete. Please note, you will need to fully complete the survey in one sitting. 

Please click on the following link:

https://insights.oma.org/c/r/SGFP_PPC_Survey  

Alternatively, you can copy and paste the full URL below into your web browser

Thank you for your continued engagement with SGFP. Your stories, feedback, and participation make our advocacy work possible and effective. We look forward to continuing this important work together in 2025.

Warm regards,

Executive Team, Section on General and Family Practice

Dr. David Barber, Chair

Dr. Salesh Budhoo

Dr. Rebecca Hicks

Dr. Cathy Mastrogiacomo

Dr. Beth Perrier

Dr. Adam Stewart

Dr. Darija Vujosevic

The Ontario Medical Association (OMA) facilitates the distribution of communications for its various Constituency Groups, and therefore the views and the opinions expressed in this communication may not reflect the views, policies, and opinions of the OMA. The OMA does not warrant the accuracy, timeliness, or completeness of the information contained in this communication, nor does it accept any responsibility for its contents.