Health
Hundreds of doctors resign from British Medical Association over its support for puberty blockers
From LifeSiteNews
Hundreds of U.K. doctors are resigning from the British Medical Association over its opposition to a ban on puberty blockers for kids, accusing the union of ignoring evidence-based medicine and failing to represent its members’ views.
According to reports in The Times and The Telegraph, hundreds of doctors are not only going public to express their anger with the British Medical Associations’ decision to reject the Cass Review’s findings on the dangers of puberty blockers – and many are resigning.
According to The Telegraph: “Doctors with decades of experience have resigned from the British Medical Association because of the union’s opposition to the Cass review.”
As I reported earlier in this space, on August 1 the British Medical Association – the U.K. doctor’s union – called on the government to lift the ban on puberty blockers for minors and called for a pause on the implementation of the National Health Service’s Cass Review.
Initially, 1,000 senior physicians from across the U.K. responded by publishing an open letter to chairman of the BMA, Professor Philip Banfield; that number is now up to 1,400, with 900 of those being BMA members. Among their accusations is that the 69-member council passed their policy at a “secretive and opaque” meeting.
READ: Texas forbids changing sex on driver’s licenses, state IDs for ‘gender identity’
“We write as doctors to say, ‘not in my name,’” the letter read. “We are extremely disappointed that the BMA council had passed a motion to conduct a ‘critique’ of the Cass Review and to lobby to oppose its recommendations … It does not reflect the views of the wider membership, whose opinion you did not seek. We understand that no information will be released on the voting figures and how council members voted. That is a failure of accountability to members and is simply not acceptable.”
The letter further stated that the Cass Review “is the most comprehensive review into healthcare for children with gender related distress ever conducted” and urged the BMA to “abandon its pointless exercise” of attacking and opposing the recommendations.
“By lobbying against the best evidence we have, the BMA is going against the principles of evidence-based medicine and against ethical practice,” the doctors wrote, in an almost unprecedented broadside against their own union in protest of the BMA’s brazen transgender activism.
As first reported by The Times, comments made beneath that open letter “reveal many doctors have torn up their membership cards in response to the union’s stance on the review.” One commenter stated: “On the basis of the BMA’s outrageous stance on the superbly researched and written Cass Report, which has my full support and endorsement, I have decided to leave the BMA having been a member for 50 years since I qualified as a doctor. Increasingly, they not only fail to represent my views, they display no respect for the very premise and ethos inherent in being a medical professional.”
Another doctor wrote: “As a union, primarily, it is the role of the BMA to represent its members, and not to drive clinical opinion, especially in specialist areas. I am considering resigning after membership of 42 years.” A third stated: “I left the BMA partly because of this sort of behaviour on the part of the leadership, having been a member for some thirty years.” Jacky Davis, a consultant radiologist and council member, told The Times:
This minority has voted to block the implementation of Cass, an evidence-based review which took four years to put together. They have no evidence for their opposition. The Cass review is not a matter for a trade union. It is not our business as a union to be doing a critique of the Cass review. It is a waste of time and resources.
READ: Federal court backs Christian teacher who refused to call kids by transgender ‘identity’
GB News also reported on the exodus, reporting that: “Critics slammed the decision as not representing the views of all members, critiquing the BMA’s ‘abysmal’ leadership which was becoming ‘increasingly bonkers and ideologically captured.’” And according to the Daily Mail: “One signatory called for a ‘vote of no confidence in BMA leadership’ and another commenting that ‘activists appear to have been allowed to take over.’”
What is so extraordinary about this is that LGBT activists have achieved phenomenal success by infiltrating and taking over organizations, and then imposing their agenda from the top-down. Once LGBT activists are in a position to pass policies, control votes, and even censor publications, their agenda is assured. This has been incredibly effective for decades.
In this instance, however, the ideologically captured British Medical Association is facing a full-scale revolt from its own members, and its credibility is taking a severe hit. Even the press coverage of their move, which would have been laudatory only a few years ago, is almost universally negative.
The BMA is still committed to its agenda – but its grip on the narrative has been broken, and it seems unlikely that the union will be able to reestablish it.
From the Fraser Institute
By Bacchus Barua and Tegan Hill
Shortly after Danielle Smith was sworn in as premier, she warned Albertans that it would “be a bit bumpy for the next 90 days” on the road to health-care reform. Now, more than two years into her premiership, the province’s health-care system remains in shambles.
According to a new report, this year patients in Alberta faced a median wait of 38.4 weeks between seeing a general practitioner and receiving medically necessary treatment. That’s more than eight weeks longer than the Canadian average (30.0 weeks) and more than triple the 10.5 weeks Albertans waited in 1993 when the Fraser Institute first published nationwide estimates.
In fact, since Premier Smith took office in 2022, wait times have actually increased 15.3 per cent.
To be fair, Premier Smith has made good on her commitment to expand collaboration with the private sector for the delivery of some public surgeries, and focused spending in critical areas such as emergency services and increased staffing. She also divided Alberta Health Services, arguing it currently operates as a monopoly and monopolies don’t face the consequences when delivering poor service.
While the impact of these reforms remain largely unknown, one thing is clear: the province requires immediate and bold health-care reforms based on proven lessons from other countries (e.g. Australia and the Netherlands) and other provinces (e.g. Saskatchewan and Quebec).
These reforms include a rapid expansion of contracts with private clinics to deliver more publicly funded services. The premier should also consider a central referral system to connect patients to physicians with the shortest wait time in their area in public or private clinics (while patients retain the right to wait longer for the physician of their choice). This could be integrated into the province’s Connect Care system for electronic patient records.
Saskatchewan did just this in the early 2010s and moved from the longest wait times in Canada to the second shortest in just four years. (Since then, wait times have crept back up with little to no expansion in the contracts with private clinics, which was so successful in the past. This highlights a key lesson for Alberta—these reforms are only a first step.)
Premier Smith should also change the way hospitals are paid to encourage more care and a more patient-focused approach. Why?
Because Alberta still generally follows an outdated approach to hospital funding where hospitals receive a pre-set budget annually. As a result, patients are seen as “costs” that eat into the hospital budget, and hospitals are not financially incentivized to treat more patients or provide more rapid access to care (in fact, doing so drains the budget more rapidly). By contrast, more successful universal health-care countries around the world pay hospitals for the services they provide. In other words, by making treatment the source of hospital revenue, hospitals provide more care more rapidly to patients and improve the quality of services overall. Quebec is already moving in this direction, with other provinces also experimenting.
The promise of a “new day” for health care in Alberta is increasingly looking like a pipe dream, but there’s still time to meaningfully improve health care for Albertans. To finally provide relief for patients and their families, Premier Smith should increase private-sector collaboration, create a central referral system, and change the way hospitals are funded.
Bacchus Barua
Tegan Hill
Director, Alberta Policy, Fraser Institute
Alberta
Province says Alberta family doctors will be the best-paid and most patient-focused in the country
Dr. Shelley Duggan, president, Alberta Medical Association
New pay model, better access to family doctors |
Alberta’s government is implementing a new primary care physician compensation model to improve access to family physicians across the province.
Alberta’s government recognizes that family physicians are fundamental to strengthening the health care system. Unfortunately, too many Albertans do not currently have access to regular primary care from a family physician. This is why, last year, the government entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Alberta Medical Association (AMA) and committed to developing a new primary care physician compensation model.
Alberta’s government will now be implementing a new compensation model for family doctors to ensure they continue practising in the province and to attract more doctors to choose Alberta, which will also alleviate pressures in other areas of the health care system.
This new model will make Alberta’s family doctors the strongest-paid and most patient-focused in the country.
“Albertans must be able to access a primary care provider. We’ve been working hard with our partners at the Alberta Medical Association to develop a compensation model that will not only support Alberta’s doctors but also improve Albertans’ access to physicians. Ultimately, our deal will make Alberta an even more attractive place to practise family medicine.”
“We have worked with the Alberta Medical Association to address the challenges that primary care physicians are facing. This model will provide the supports physicians need and improve patient access to the care they need.”
The new model is structured to encourage physicians to grow the number of patients they care for and encourage full-time practice. Incentives include increases for:
- Maintaining high panel numbers (minimum of 500 patients), which will incentivize panel growth and improve access to primary care for patients.
- Providing after-hours care to relieve pressure on emergency departments and urgent care centres.
- Improving technology to encourage using tools that help streamline work and enhance patient care.
- Enhancing team-based care, which will encourage developing integrated teams that may include family physicians, nurse practitioners, registered nurses, dietitians and pharmacists to provide patients with the best care possible.
- Adding efficiencies in clinical operations to simplify processes for both patients and health care providers.
As a market and evidence-based model, it recognizes and pays for the critically important work of physicians, including the number of patients seen and patient complexity, as well as time spent providing direct and indirect care.
“Family medicine is the foundation of our health care system. This model recognizes the extensive training, experience and leadership of primary care physicians, and we hope it will help Alberta to attract and retain more family medicine specialists who provide comprehensive care.”
Additionally, family physicians who are not compensated through the traditional fee-for-service model will now receive higher pay rates under their payment model, known as the alternative relationship plan. This includes those who provide inpatient care in hospitals and rural generalists. Alberta’s government is increasing this to ensure hospital-based family physicians and rural generalists also receive fair, competitive pay that reflects the importance of these roles.
“This new compensation model will make Alberta more attractive for physicians and will make sure more Albertans can have improved access to a primary care provider no matter where they live. It will also help support efforts to strengthen primary care in Alberta as the foundation of the health care system.”
“Family physicians have been anxiously awaiting this announcement about the new compensation model. We anticipate this model will allow many primary care physicians to continue to deliver comprehensive, lifelong care to their patients while keeping their community clinics viable.”
Quick facts
- Enrolment in the primary care physician compensation model will begin in January with full implementation in spring 2025, provided there are at least 500 physicians enrolled.
- The alternative relationship plan rate has not been updated since it was initially calculated in 2002.
- The new compensation model for family doctors is the latest primary health care improvement following actions that include:
- A $42-million investment to recruit more health providers and expand essential services.
- A new rural and remote bursary program for family medicine resident physicians.
- Additional funding of $257 million to stabilize primary care delivery and improve access to family physicians.
- Implementing the Nurse Practitioner Primary Care Program, which expands the role of nurse practitioners by allowing them to practise comprehensive patient care autonomously, either by operating their own practices or working independently within existing primary care settings.
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