Bill 41 is a Significant Step Backwards press release: Ontario Medical Association

Bill 41 is a Significant Step Backwards

 

Bill 41 is a Significant Step Backwards

Toronto, ON Dec. 7, 2016 – Ontario’s doctors are deeply disappointed that Bill 41 became law today.
 
The legislation primarily serves to give government more power and control. Instead of more funding for patient care, the government’s plan is to create more expensive bureaucracy.
Bill 41 will create up to 80 new sub-Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) bureaucracies. These will be in addition to the already existing 14 LHINs, which according to the Auditor General don’t have sufficient oversight and performance accountability. In spite of this, the Minister of Health, through Bill 41, is giving LHINs more responsibility without any clear process for ensuring they are effective.

 “Patients are desperately in need of care,” said Dr. Virginia Walley, President of the Ontario Medical Association. “It is troubling that the government’s response to the needs of patients is to increase their own power over local planning, increase the number of administrative jobs in health care, and create duplicative forms for doctors to fill out.  None of what the government is doing will add a single cent to make front line care more accessible to patients.  It will not assist the almost 800,000 Ontarians who do not have a family doctor and it will do nothing to reduce wait times.”.....