News & events
Press release
For immediate release:
October 20, 2009
Highlights from the Medical Council of Canada Annual Meeting
Ottawa - The Medical Council of Canada held its Annual Meeting in Ottawa from October 18 to 20, 2009 where it discussed topics such as the National Assessment Collaboration and a task force review of its assessments, set its policy direction for the upcoming year, and affirmed the 2010 fees for its examinations.
The Council approved the governance model for the National Assessment Collaboration (NAC). The NAC will help create a simplified, co-ordinated national approach to assessing international medical graduates at the regional level. The Collaboration is currently focusing on launching an Objective Structured Clinical Examination that will assess the competency of international medical graduates competing for postgraduate residency positions. The Collège des médecins du Québec will be using this examination in the spring, and international medical graduate programs in British Columbia and Alberta will be incorporating elements of this examination into their own assessments in 2010. Other provincial international medical graduate programs will offer the examination in the years ahead.
“After four years of negotiations, it is wonderful that the NAC has a structure and will be starting the examination in spring 2010,” said Dr. Ian Bowmer, Executive Director of the Medical Council of Canada, at the conclusion of the meeting. “We are thankful for the efforts of all of our partners around the table who have made this examination a reality.”
The Council also announced that it would be setting up an assessment review task force. The Task Force will investigate how medical regulatory authorities and other stakeholders use each of the Medical Council’s examinations. At the end of the review, the Task Force will provide recommendations on assessments as well as the current examination structure and processes.
Additionally, the Federation of Medical Regulatory Authorities of Canada and the Medical Council of Canada jointly announced that they will be developing a National Registration process. This project will leverage the Council’s IT infrastructure and its success with the recently established Physician Credentials Repository to provide a common licensing application that physicians can use to apply for registration to multiple medical regulatory authorities simultaneously.
The examination fees that had been projected at the 2008 Annual Meeting were affirmed by Council: the 2010 fee for the Medical Council of Canada Qualifying Examination Part I will be C$720 and the 2010 fee for the Medical Council of Canada Qualifying Examination Part II will be C$1,850. The fees for the Medical Council of Canada Evaluating Examination will rise to C$1,500 for a first-time application, and C$1,300 for a reapplication. “All of our examinations are supposed to run on a cost recovery basis,” explained Dr. Dennis Kendel, Chair of the Medical Council of Canada Finance Committee. “Based on requests from resident and student members of Council, we have agreed to increase fees to cost recovery for the Part II examination over a five-year timeframe. We hope this will help our candidates adapt to the new fee structure while still enabling us to deliver the examination regionally. This saves candidates the expense of having to travel to a centralized examination centre.”
The Council honoured Dr. André Jacques with its Outstanding Achievement Award for his work in assessment of physician performance in practice through continuing medical education and with the Federation of Medical Regulatory Authorities of Canada. Dr. Thomas Maguire was awarded the Dr. Louis Levasseur Award for his extensive contributions to the Medical Council of Canada.
The Medical Council of Canada’s vision is to achieve “the highest level of medical care for Canadians through excellence in evaluation of physicians.” It conducts over 12,000 assessments of medical students and graduates every year through its three examinations, offered in both official languages in sites across Canada, and in the case of its Evaluating Examination, in over 500 locations in 73 countries.
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For more information:
Jessica Hertzog
Communications Co-ordinator
Medical Council of Canada
613-521-6012, ext. 2277
jhertzog@mcc.ca
