The Yukon Medical Association (YMA) held its annual general meeting over the weekend and is talking up its strategic plan.

Dr. Alex Kmet took some time on Friday afternoon to discuss the association’s plans with the Star. He’s the current president of the YMA.

“I think the most important thing we’ve accomplished with this AGM is launching our first 10-year strategic plan,” Kmet said. “There are three main priorities.”

The first, he explained, is physician engagement.

“That’s the importance of how we get the membership engaged, but also outlines what are the benefits of getting engaged.”

The second priority, Kmet explained, is effective advocacy.

“That means that we are making strides with truth and reconciliation, but also being able to be an advocate to make substantive improvement to the health care system.”

The third priority is improving primary care.

“That’s so we can attach a person with a longitudinal family doctor so we can get rid of the no family doctor program at some point.”

Kmet, who is in office for another year, said those will be his priorities for the next year that he remains in office, as well as being a 10-year plan for the association.

On Friday, the conference heard Health and Social Services Minister Tracy-Anne McPhee speak, as well as Dr. Joss Reimer of the Canadian Medical Association.

McPhee said the changes the government is trying to make to the health care system are both “a perfect storm and a challenging opportunity.

“We cannot be successful in meeting any of these challenges without you.”

McPhee spoke of improvements to the billing system she said should make life easier for doctors, including minimizing manual assessment for billing.

A committee is still working on making other improvements as well, she said.

Reimer, who is the president-elect of the Canadian association, said she has never seen so much physician burnout as the CMA is seeing right now.

That’s one of the priorities it’s working with the federal government to solve, but there’s no obvious solution in sight.

Kmet said the conference “heard from a number of partners on how to resolve the crisis in health care right now, particularly with the Yukon having fewer doctors per 10,000 people than is the average in the country.

“To address that issue, we all need to actually partner,” he continued.

Kmet said that group included governments, medical associations and hospital corporations.

“It is very clear we have to have those partnerships to meet those challenges, and it’s exciting to say that you have your contribution, which is not only necessary to work through this, but is necessary to make things better for the patients.”

As for McPhee’s comments, Kmet said “she spoke about that collaboration, she spoke about the commitments to the changes that health and wellness Yukon is bringing and she committed to ongoing collaboration to resolve those deficiencies.”

Kmet said that’s an improvement considering that several years ago, when the Yukon government released its Putting People First report, the association didn’t feel it had been consulted properly.