Recruiting Doctors Can Be a Challenge
So the article in today’s Globe and Mail was a reminder to me that while PEI is experiencing family doctor shortages so are many, many other places in Canada. Particularily hard hit are rural communities and small towns. It is becoming very hard to attract doctors to these types of areas. It is interesting to note that many communities are dramatically increasing the incentives to attract doctors to these places. Here are some of the recent packages that have made headline news across the country as reported in today’s Globe and Mail article:
- Digby, N.S. The town agreed to pay $187,000 to cover the medical school tuition of a husband and wife pair of physicians on the condition they practise in the community for 10 years.
- Kirkland Lake, Ont. Any doctor who worked there for a week received $8,000, plus airfare, lakeside accommodations, a car rental and free child care. Anyone who decided to make the move permanent received an established, fully paid-for practice.
- Moose Factory, Ont. Family doctors received an annual salary of $300,000, free housing, moving expenses, no overhead costs, eight weeks of paid vacation and four return trips home every year.
- Beaverlodge, Alta. An incentive program offered five years of property and tax exemption, plus $5,000 in moving expenses.
- Princeton, B.C. Physicians were offered a free car and golf membership.
While attractive benefit packages will help to solve the problem in some communities I wonder what it will mean for others? How do we actually solve the doctor shortage? Can we solve the shortage? (Demographics would indicate that we won’t be able to…so what does this really mean for the small towns and communities across Canada?) How will small communities compete with the larger communities?
Having to bribe doctors to serve the needs of people in small, rural communities is appalling. Where are the bribe-taking/demanding doctors’ ethics? They should be ashamed of themselves.
If doctors and medical schools in Canada fail to self-regulate to provide care to small, rural communities, the federal government should step up to the plate. From day one when they enter medical school, where their tuition is subsidized to a great extent by Canadian tax-payers, doctors should be trained with the expectation that they will serve where needed most. There would be no need for communities to lure doctors with lucrative perquisites because doctors would be assigned to them.
I guess the challenge here is that these incentives are becoming increasingly common. Communities are doing whatever they can to address the issue now because in many cases the Provincial and Federal Governments just are not acting fast enough.
We are short of doctors now and this is only going to increase as time goes by due to the aging population. No matter how many communities offer incentives we will still be short of doctors to send to all of these places – even with the best incentives offered.
So what are we to do? More regionalization? Increased roles for nurse practitioners, pharmacists and other health care providers? Better use of technology…telephone, webcam and computers? There must be ways that we can streamline what we do now so that it is more effective. Further as a society we need to invest far more in prevention related initiatives…so that we decrease the number of people who actually need medical intervention due to lifestyle related health concerns.