The Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan, Toronto, said eligible physicians in Ontario will be able to join its defined benefit pension plan in January of next year.
This will allow incorporated physicians who run their own practices, provide services from a medical clinic or provide services from a hospital to enroll in HOOPP, the pension plan said in a Dec. 10 news release. Such eligible physicians must be incorporated under and receive employment earnings from what is known as a “medicine professional corporation.”
As a result, the MPC would become a HOOPP employer and the incorporated physicians and other employees who work for MPC would be eligible to join the pension plan.
Citing data from medical regulator The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, HOOPP said more than 24,000 physicians in the province are incorporated. CPSO could not be immediately reached for comment.
Rachel Arbour, Head of Plan Benefits, Design and Policy at HOOPP, said that currently the pension plan’s membership comprises the workers at nearly 700 employers across Ontario, including nurses, clerical staff, housekeeping, maintenance, and many others who provide healthcare services.
“Our (current) members also include (some) physicians who are employees of those employers, but that is a very small number of physicians across Ontario,” she noted.
Arbour further explained that physicians generally operate independently from our employers.
“There were some technical challenges that we needed to work through to allow them to participate in our Plan,” she said. “New plan amendments enable incorporated physicians to join the Plan with certain limits on earnings that will allow their benefits to grow in a manner consistent with other members.”
The goal of the measure, she said, is to “broaden access so that physicians can determine whether joining HOOPP will make sense for them.”
The firm’s research suggest that physicians in the province “recognize the value of HOOPP and we anticipate that there will be a group that will find HOOPP relevant to their retirement plans. Our goal was to create a path, and to be ready to welcome those who are interested, but we do not have a specific number.”
Sebastien Betermier, associate professor of finance at McGill University and the executive director of the International Centre for Pension Management, praised the move by HOOPP.
“It’s for the self-employed physicians. It’s great news to expand coverage to them,” he said.
HOOPP currently has 460,000 active, deferred and retired members. As of Dec. 31, 2023, HOOPP had net assets of C$112.6 billion ($84.9 billion).
