Dear Members,
We are pleased to announce that the joint AMA-AHS Stipend Working Group (SWG) has now commenced meeting.
Stipend payments were created to compensate for services that are vital to patient care and safety and are aimed at improving hospital workflow. These payments were intended to recognize recruitment and retention challenges for targeted physician resources, in addition to addressing the need for on-site and off-site physician availability. Furthermore, stipends provide physician remuneration for additional services that are mostly unrecognized in the Schedule of Medical Benefits (SOMB) and, when combined with insured services, result in the provision of total patient care compensation.
Schedule 6 of the AMA Agreement provides that due process be afforded to physicians currently receiving stipend compensation from AHS. The SWG held its inaugural meeting on December 18, 2024, and will continue to meet regularly to review the current stipends paid by AHS to physicians and make written recommendations to the Management Committee. We will keep you informed.
The SWG AMA physician representatives are Dr. Vivian Ewa, Dr. Shelby Haque and Dr. Richard Hanelt. If you or your physician group are receiving a stipend and have questions, please email the AMA at [email protected].
Sincerely,
Shelley Duggan, MD, FRCPC
President, Alberta Medical Association
P.S. Several physicians have reached out to AMA in recent days because they have been notified by AHS about upcoming changes to their various on-call programs.
I will have more information for you soon about this. In the meantime, if you have received such a notice, please let us know about it. Email
[email protected].