Central Health defends fly-in doctors as necessary to maintain services

An executive at Central Health says there's no reason for the public to worry that the health board's fly-in doctors are a COVID-19 risk.

Martin Vogel, the health authority's interim vice-president of medical services, defended Tuesday theiruse of temporary doctors also known as locums after a Newfoundland and Labrador radiologist alleged she had been sidelined by Central Health in favour of specialists from the United States and the United Kingdom.

"With the COVID experience, we have meticulously and I mean meticulously followed the guidance from the province and in particular the chief medical officer of health."

Vogel said any fly-in doctor the health board employs goes through multiple screening tests at airports and at arrival, and undergoes a mandatory 14-day self-isolation period once they arrive in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Central Health has arranged for a radiologist from California and one from the United Kingdom to arrive in Newfoundland and Labrador this year, and Vogel says they are just some of the many locum physicians that are used in the organization.

"If we stepped away from bringing locum coverage in, we would really be up the creek without a paddle in many of our instances in service delivery," he said.

CBC News has asked Central Health what kind of compensation they offer physicians during their mandatory isolation period.

Part of long-term strategy

On Monday, Dr. Jane Rendell told CBC News she felt the use of fly-in doctors during the COVID-19 pandemic was unnecessarily riskyand unnecessarily expensive.

Vogel replied Tuesday that although the preference is to hire full-time, locally trained doctors, Central Health is also working to stabilize its physician group and that means convincing those fly-in physicians to stay longer and longer, and to sign more permanent contracts.

"These are sort of ongoing recruitment efforts," he said, explaining that the California radiologist is "very interested in a permanent, part-time position with the organization."

"He informed me this morning that he was in fact already starting to look into the immigration process to acquire permanent residency and Canadian citizenship," he said."So this is really part of our long-term strategy of nurturing physicians who have a commitment to work on site."

The Vaughn Report, an external review of Central Health published in 2018, recommended the health board adopt a "grow your own" recruiting and retention strategy for the organization, in an effort to slow down a "perpetual revolving door" of locums.

Rendell told CBCNewsthat recommendation means Central Health should look at hiring physicians like her before they bring in foreign doctors.

Rendell said she's been looking to go back to work at the organization, and is prepared to put aside her personal disputes with the health board to help with COVID-19 response.

"I wasn't even asked to do it. They gave these jobs to these foreign doctors without even telling me," Rendell told CBC News.

Dispute over signed letter

But in a letter released Tuesday, Central Health CEO Andree Robichaudsaid it would be "disingenuous to cancel these scheduled assignments" to give work to Rendell, when she was not working at the time they were made,

Rendell has been off work since September. The issues between both sides date back to a letter she signed that was sent to her superiors.

She told CBC that letter was based on "serious patient safety issues," including mistakes by other colleagues that she felt was affecting the quality of care.

But in her 1000 word letter Tuesday, Robichaud described that letter as part of a "concerted effort to discredit the direction, functioning and regionalization of the diagnostic imaging department at Central Health."

"culminating in a letter that she was signatory to that made false and damaging accusations against coworkers in the organization," Robichaud wrote. "This letter was sent widely outside the organization."

Rendellsaid the letter was written only after they had tried "multiple" other avenues to make their concerns known.

The radiologist has butted heads with Central Health in the past, when she stood alongside colleagues who complained about serious bullying and harassment inside the health authority.

Both sides in the dispute say they want to resume mediation, which had been put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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