Is cash alone enough to solve the issue of retaining family doctors?
While places like Huntsville and Dryden are offering large cash incentives to recruit family doctors and nurses, it doesn’t seem like the added bonus is needed in Guelph or Wellington County, according to health care executives.
One local executive even notes the large incentive may be counterproductive in keeping family doctors around in a community long-term.
In Huntsville, local authorities are offering $80,000 as a signing bonus for any family doctor to work in the town for at least five years.
In Dryden, a family doctor setting up shop there could be in for a $155,000 cash injection to commit for four years, including up to $37,500 to help with relocation.
“My experience, having learned from other communities in Ontario, is that cash isn’t the incentive that makes people stay,” said Ross Kirkconnell, the executive director of the Guelph Family Health Team.
“It may make people come, but it doesn’t make people stay.”
Instead of cash being king in this case, Guelph’s recruitment strategy revolves around relationships and pitching the city as a place to have a great career in the field.
He said the health team has been working with universities, namely McMaster University, in an effort to build a rapport and a connection with prospective doctors early on.
“We send them information about family practice in Guelph, and how it’s a great community and how family practice in Guelph,” Kirkconnell said. “We believe in work-life balance, and we believe in environmental sustainability, and we believe in equity, diversity and inclusion, and all of the topics that speak to your heart, help you to think ‘where do I want to set up my career, where do I want to raise my family.’”
Since 2020, there are 29 new family doctors in Guelph, including those taking over practices of retiring physicians.
“I’d like to hope that our belief in making (Guelph) a great place to work has been successful,” Kirkconnell said.
“We have not had to offer large sums of money to attract physicians to our communities,” added Alison Armstrong, manager of communications with the Wellington Health Care Alliance, in an emailed statement.
“Most choose to come here because of the team-based care, supportive colleagues, and they can practice rural medicine without living in a remote community.”
It’s not to say retention bonuses don’t exist in certain areas of the county.
Mount Forest and Minto-Mapleton can offer newly graduated family physicians around $85,000 to open up and remain in the community for at least four years.
It is part of the Northern Rural and Retention Initiative in place from the province, with community eligibility based on an index score. Because of it being close enough to an urban area, Centre Wellington isn’t eligible to get funding from that initiative.
Armstrong said in the county, rent relief is offered to all new physicians so they can establish their practice. About $1,000 is offered to help cover set-up costs too.
But are strategies paying off? It seems like they are, according to Armstrong.
“Mount Forest recently recruited a family physician who was training there to take over a retiring physicians practice,” she said. “Centre Wellington recruited a US-trained, Canadian-born physician to work in a group practice in Elora. We also have several locums working in all our communities that are ‘trying out’ practices.”
She said new initiatives are also underway.
Among them, two nurse practitioner clinics opened last month in Harriston and Clifford.
But while strategies are working in both urban and rural areas, there is still the elephant in the room.
In March, a report from the Ontario College of Family Physicians suggested nearly 30,000 people in Guelph and Wellington County are without a doctor.
And citing retirements as a big cause, that number is expected to rise to over 55,000 in the next two years.
Armstrong said at the moment, between all communities the Wellington Health Care Alliance cover, they need about 10 family doctors, based on potential retirements and patients already in need of a doctor.
“It is a difficult number to estimate as we rely on data provided by the provincial waitlist system,” she said. “Only patients who are not rostered to a family physician can register with (Health Care Connect). We have many families who move to our communities and are rostered to a physician in another city. They are afraid to give up this physician just to go on a wait list to get a doctor closer to their new home.”
For Guelph, Kirkconnell said a business case was presented to the Ministry of Health in 2017, noting if Guelph’s population grows at a rate of two per cent per year, that equals out to about two new family doctors needed a year “just to stay afloat.”
He said what hasn’t been done is analyzing what Guelph has and needs, and what the plan is.
“It’s competitive out there,” Kirkconnell said. “As communities are offering $85,000 and whatever else they’re offering, Guelph’s a great place but we can’t just rest on our laurels.”
He said doctor recruitment plays a part in their everyday work, and is confident the Guelph area will reach a point where everyone has a doctor.
“We know there are people still looking for doctors, and will read this and might be frustrated, saying ‘wait, I can’t get into one of those doctors,’” he said. “Our goal is to get to a place where you can.”
