Canada plans to reform doctors' pay

The government of Canada's richest province, Ontario, is to reform the way doctors are paid because funding for its Medicare programme is outstripped by demand.

The Ontario Medical Association has designed a pilot programme using a system called “rostering,” which combines the current practice of paying a fee for each medical service rendered (“fee for service”) with a modified capitation scheme along British lines.

In an article in the Ontario Medical Review the chairwoman of the medical association's primary care reform physician advisory group, Dr Wendy Graham, says that family doctors trained in Canada are considered throughout the world to be of the highest …