The following are highlights of the March meeting of Council.

Council at a Glance infographic transcript

Council at a Glance

Highlights from the recent Council meeting

Policies and Standards

Council made several decisions about policy. It approved the Decision-Making for End-of-Life Care policy and rescinded its Blood Borne Viruses policy.

Council voted to approve a new Standard for Out-of-Hospital Premises. The Standard, entitled “Image Guidance when Administering Nerve Blocks for Adult Chronic Pain,” requires image guidance be used for all neuraxial, paravertebral and plexus nerve blocks.

Addressing Physician Supply

In efforts to improve physician supply, Council approved for circulation of three registration policies:

• Alternative Pathways to Registration for Physicians Trained in the United States;
• Specialist Recognition Criteria in Ontario; and
• Recognition of Certification Without Examination Issued by CFPC.

We are also circulating the Emergency Circumstances Practice Class of Registration, which will allow colleges to register health care professionals when emergencies disrupt typical routes to registration, i.e., writing examinations.

The Registrar also spoke of Executive Committees’ recent decision to approve (on behalf of Council) the Qualifying Examination Policy and our continuing work with government on Practice Ready Assessment (PRA) route for family practice.

By-laws for Circulation

We are circulating proposed changes to the public register section of CPSO’s by-laws. This is the first step of a comprehensive review and rewrite of our by-laws with the goal of improving clarity, simplifying the language and achieving a more modernized set of by-laws by the end of 2023. Among the changes, we are revising the by-law to post only revocations of hospital privileges and removing Quality Assurance Committee SCERPS from the register list.

Quality Improvement

Dr. Whitmore noted that we exceeded our Quality Improvement (QI) targets in 2022. We established 54 Quality Partnerships with hospitals, exceeding our target of 40. And we engaged 4,059 physicians in the Individual stream, surpassing our target of 3,000. Our target in 2023 is to have a total of 5,000 physicians participate in QI. As of February, 290 physicians had completed with 3,894 in progress.

Response to Public Help Line and Physician Advisory Service

We spoke about how responsive we are on our Patient Help Line and Physician Advisory Service. We answer 98 percent of calls live, up from 51 percent in July 2022.

Investigations

Our complaint numbers in 2021 and 2022 are similar: we received 4,040 complaints in 2021 and 3,971 in 2022. Many of the complaints are the result of frustration with system issues, which physicians have little control over.

In terms of ongoing complaints, we have seen a reduction. In January 2018, we had 2,242 ongoing complaints compared to 1,226 in 2023.

Ontario Physicians and Surgeons Discipline Tribunal

We are exceeding our target in terms of reducing the length of time from referral of a discipline case to completion within the discipline process. We aimed to be below 15 months and over the last year, we have kept it to 12 months.