Parting thoughts from the OMA’s former CEO

In 2018, after a busy stint as the first chief investment officer for the government of Ontario, Allan O’Dette had no plans to jump back into another demanding job. “I was going to take a year off and write,” he recalls. Then the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) called, wanting him to serve as CEO. After initially saying no, O’Dette eventually relented, taking on the top job at the 143-year-old organization. He began that fall after securing a commitment from the organization that he would have support in leading change. He left his post at the end of March after four-and-a-half years. “It’s time to pass the torch on to someone else and go to the next chapter,” he says. Neither O’Dette nor the OMA offered any more comment as to the details of his contract and the precise reason for his departure. Interim CEO John Bozzo has stepped in for the moment—he’s a former executive vice-president with the OMA, who’s delaying his own retirement until a permanent CEO can be found. “I’m so proud of the work we did,” says O’Dette of his tenure, which spanned two services agreement negotiations and some pretty heady months—entailing 75-hour work-weeks—during the height of the pandemic. Early goals O’Dette says he took on the CEO role with a plan to improve what he called the four Ms: membership, management (of government relations), mandate (a.k.a. governance) and modernize. “We needed to focus on the membership and reframing and driving the value proposition,” he says of that first priority. He knew that trust from members had eroded, so he felt his top job was improving that relationship. O’Dette spearheaded changes that now see all of the OMA’s 43,000 members vote directly to ratify physician services agreements. For government relations, he recalls how dire things were when he started. “In 2018, the Ontario government would not return our calls,” he says. So, he worked to build a strong, non-combative relationship with the Ministry of Health. “Anyone can jump up and down and scream.” For the OMA’s mandate, O’Dette and his team set to reorganize governance by trimming the association’s board from 26 members down to a more manageable 11, with eight physicians and, for the first time, three non-physicians. The 250-member council was reduced to a smaller general assembly focused on “priorities and planning,” says O’Dette. To modernize, the OMA has become increasingly digitized. Results and challenges From O’Dette’s perspective, there’s been positive change at the OMA over the last few years. Staff engagement, in particular, has grown, with a survey revealing engagement scores over 80%, up dramatically from previous surveys. Challenges remain for the OMA and its members, however, including another services agreement negotiation, the need for more work on health policy, long patient wait lists, substantial labour shortages and physician burnout. “These are very real challenges,” says O’Dette, who is confident the association can tackle them all and keep moving forward while he, personally, takes a much-needed rest for the summer to play golf and spend time with his wife. “The OMA is in great shape.”

Parting thoughts from the OMA’s former CEO

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