Doctors, province in court this week
Unapproved contracts for new physicians, money for benefits plans at issue
The provincial government and Doctors Nova Scotia today engage in what could turn into a protracted court proceeding.
In dispute are the government’s alleged use of unapproved contracts for some new physicians coming to the province and money owed to Doctors Nova Scotia for the physicians’ health and dental plan and other benefits.
“Back on Oct. 3, when we filed our notices of intended action, we had hoped that government would come back to us during that two-month notice period and before we were allowed to file documents with the Supreme Court, we had hoped to see some resolution of these issues,” said Nancy Mccready-williams, chief executive officer of Doctors Nova Scotia. “Government did not reach out during that time.”
On Dec. 4, the doctors group filed three notices of application to the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, requesting a chambers application to resolve the dispute.
“Essentially, it is the quickest, most timely and we believe most efficient and most effective way to get these kinds of matters addressed,” Mccready- Williams said. “These are interpretation issues that we believe can be easily dealt with by way of written argument combined with oral argument.”
She said the doctors group would have anticipated going into a chambers court this month and getting a hearing date set down sometime this spring before a judge, where both sides would have filed affidavit evidence and there would be an opportunity to cross-examine on that evidence and make oral arguments to expedite the resolution.
But the government has objected to that procedure, instead requesting that the court convert the matters to a full trial. Today, the parties will appear before a judge to set dates for the government’s conversion application to be heard.
“Government is asking the court to deal with these complex matters at the same time and within an appropriate time frame to obtain and consider the relevant information,” said Tracy Barron, spokeswoman for the Health and Wellness Department.
Mccready-williams said Doctors Nova Scotia is “strongly opposed” to a full court proceeding.
“We are going to go into court on Monday morning and we are just going to get a date, probably for some time in February or March, just to argue whether these matters should be converted to a full-blown trial, which is what government wants, and whether they should be jammed together and consolidated,” she said.
“We don’t think they should be consolidated because they are separate matters.”
Mccready-williams said government is deploying unnecessary delay tactics. If government is successful in having the proceedings converted to a trial, she said it is unlikely that it would be heard in Supreme Court within the next two years.
“What this creates is a level of uncertainty in Nova Scotia on how to make contracts with physicians and what are the contracting protocols, something that just cannot continue to be outstanding for the next two years at a time when we are trying to recruit as many physicians to this province as possible.”
The contract issues stem from June 2016, when Doctors Nova Scotia, which represents 3,500 physicians including practising and retired doctors, medical students and residents, ratified the master agreement. Health and Wellness allegedly started making unilateral changes in 2017 to the contract template for new doctors coming to the province.
“The second reason that we don’t want to wait two years to have this thing resolved, is that we believe the government is sitting on $4.4 million of physicians’ money and that means we would continue to operate their health and dental and benefits program without a responsible contingency fund in place. That puts physicians at risk. Both these issues put physicians at risk.”
The issue of money owed for benefits revolves around a contingency fund set up in case there is a dispute between Doctors Nova Scotia and the province, she said. Over the years, doctors have paid into the contingency fund to get it to a level of $4 million, or enough to pay for one year of coverage.
She said the money came from doctors’ pockets and not from the province, but the government stopped giving the association funding for the benefits until the contingency fund was drawn down to zero. It then resumed payments for the plan.
“We want to attract a lot of physicians to the province over the next couple of years and this open question of what are the terms and conditions of a physician’s contract should be resolved as soon as possible and not left to fester over the next two years.”