CINDY E. HARNETT / TIMES COLONIST
JULY 4, 2014 09:56 PM
Photograph By Darren Stone, Victoria Times-Colonist
Island Health and about 60 hospital-based doctors reached an interim deal Friday and hope to hammer out a long-term deal by October.
“A four-month interim agreement between Island Health and the hospitalists in South Island has been reached,” the health authority said in a statement.
“This will give Island Health and the hospitalists time to reach a longer-term agreement. All services that have been provided to patients over the past year will continue to be provided.”
The contract between Island Health and Victoria Hospitalist Physicians Inc. expired at midnight June 30.
As of July 1, the doctors were forced to sign a daily contract with Island Health or to bill the Medical Services Plan for their services in order to get paid.
Some doctors were reluctant to sign the non-negotiable individual contracts, which they saw as a bullying tactic.
Billing MSP would result in being paid for only a fraction of their work, they said, as there are no billing codes for some of what they do, such as liaising with other health professionals and agencies to help patients who are often very sick and have multiple problems.
Hospitalist Matthew Moher wasn’t prepared to sign Island Health’s contract. For four days, he honoured his obligations under the College of Physicians and Surgeons and his moral obligations to patients and worked on the assumption he would not get paid, he said.
The uncertainty evaporated Friday afternoon when the two sides reached an interim agreement.
The details are still to be worked out, but the deal preserves features of the old agreement and allows the doctors, who are subcontractors, to again be paid through their corporation.
Moher will be compensated under the interim agreement for his four days of work.
Dr. Wayne DeMott, negotiations lead for the hospitalist group, said the hospitalists were headed into the weekend understaffed and uncertain about how they would get paid and how the situation would unfold.
As a sign of the fevered pitch of the negotiations, the deal was written out and pieced together on chunks of paper late Friday.
“If we didn’t get this, there would be a mess forthcoming,” DeMott said.
“Now we can sit down and complete our negotiations. But who knows what will happen in October?”
Vancouver lawyer Murray Tevlin, who is representing the hospitalists, said such contracts are often extended through bargaining and called the health authority’s refusal to extend past July 1 “weird and mysterious.”
Both sides in the dispute agree the contract talks are not about money but rather about how the job is performed and by how many. Good patient care and safety throughout were a prime concern, they said.
The physicians said they never threatened a withdrawal of services or job action, and Island Health said throughout that it had the utmost respect for the work of the hospitalists and always expected them to come to work.