A group of local doctors and hospital administrators has asked North Bay City Council for $100,000 per year for three years.
This is down from the $175,000 annually the physician recruitment team has received in the past.
How can Dr. Donald Fung, Dr. Ian Cowan and Gary Jodouin expect to recruit the number of family physicians required to replace 25 retiring doctors in the next 10 years for less money?
They say the key factors in successful recruitment of medical students for North Bay are a partnership with the Northern Ontario School of Medicine and the allure of northern living, as many of the students were born and bred in the region.
See related story: NOSM addressing health needs of Northern Ontarians
“The short-term three-year plan is four to five per year. So, that’s how that money will be used. Each one will be allocated $25,000 and the hospital will match that, for a total of $50,000. That will be used as an incentive to start a practice here in North Bay,” says Cowan. The doctor shortage problem still exists, says the group, the crisis is not over but the situation is much more promising than it was even a few years ago.
Incentivizing a physician’s commitment to a practice or hospital is a practice the local consortium has found is an invaluable asset when it comes to recruitment. The idea is to have physicians train here while they are young, build a family, buy medical supplies, hire a staff, buy real estate, and to do most of that locally.
See also: Health Centre successfully investing in doctor recruitment
The goal is to bring 16 family physicians to North Bay by 2020. When those 25 doctors wind down their careers in the next decade, some 35,000 patients will be orphaned. The other issue is these senior doctors have practices with a minimum of 1,800 patients each. Graduating family physicians are rostering “only” 1,200 patients, according to Cowan, so it takes one-and-a-half new recruits to replace one retiring doctor.
