IWK Grace Physicians Enter Alternative Funding Agreement
A new funding agreement that will help attract and retain physicians and specialists at the IWK Grace Health Centre in Halifax was announced today by Health Minister Jim Smith.
"This alternative funding package will improve health care in Nova Scotia," said Dr. Smith. "It will give doctors at the IWK Grace more time with patients and their families, and more time to undertake quality care initiatives, outreach and community programs and to look at innovative ways of improving health care."
The agreement will provide a block of funding to pay about 40 surgeons, anesthetists and radiologists at the hospital. The bulk of the money will come from the Department of Health, Dalhousie Medical School and the IWK Grace.
Before the agreement, the affected doctors were paid through the fee-for-service system, which meant they were paid a specific amount of money for every procedure they performed. With the new agreement, the doctors will receive salaries, allowing more time for appropriate planning of program delivery by physicians' groups, university and hospital departments.
Patient care will be evaluated under the new system to ensure the continued efficient and effective delivery of services such as clinical care for patients and families, administrative duties, teaching and research activities.
An agreement reached two years ago covering pediatric orthopedics at the IWK Grace will be merged with the new agreement. Pediatric medical specialists at the facility have also operated under an alternative funding agreement for the past four years.
Rick Nurse, president and CEO of the IWK Grace, said the agreement will help the health centre to do what it does best, provide top quality patient care.
"I am delighted to see the formalization of this agreement, which will provide stability to an important and valued group of physicians," said Mr. Nurse.
"The agreement will further encourage the involvement of these specialists with current initiatives that provide closer-to-home care for patients and their families. It will also support them as they pursue alternative methods of care delivery to ensure that all Maritime families receive quality, accessible care closer to their homes."
Other alternative funding agreements had been previously reached with groups such as the neurosurgery division of the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre and emergency room physicians throughout the province.
The Department of Health is close to finalizing a new funding agreement with pediatric dentists from the Department of Dentistry and is also negotiating with the Department of Internal Medicine at the QEII and with regionally based pediatric and obstetric specialists.
The IWK Grace alternative funding agreement follows similar initiatives at Queen's University Hospitals in Kingston, Ont., and the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.
Dr. Smith thanked negotiators for the various groups involved, including IWK Grace and its physicians, the Medical Society of Nova Scotia and Dalhousie Medical School.