More support provided, needed to lure MDs to Sarnia-Lambton: recruiter

Another Lambton community has signed up for doctor recruitment services.

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Warwick Township this year agreed to pay for Blue Coast Primary Care services, said of the doctor recruitment and retention agency’s Carly Cox.

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“They have been working collaboratively with us to hopefully bring a physician to their community,” she said.

Warwick joins Sarnia, Point Edward, Enniskillen Township and Lambton Shores, which signed up last year after there doctors left and needed to be replaced.

Sarnia is in the middle of a four-year, $80,000 a year agreement, and Lambton Shores paid about $11,000 in 2023, Cox said. She didn’t have permission to detail other funding deals.

Generally, the doctor recruitment agency asks for $1 per resident, but that’s shot up to $1.50 “due to our successes,” Cox said, including bringing 19 family physicians to Lambton County in the last five years.

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The agency’s running tally is 47, she said, dating back to its inception in 2002 as the Sarnia-Lambton Physician Recruitment Task Force.

Success means spending more on things like incentives to attract doctors, she said.

“The past two years, we have ended in a deficit, simply based on how successful we have been in recruitment,” she said, putting the agency’s annual budget at about $115,000.

“We’re really pleased with the amount of municipal funders that we do have,” but hope to entice more, she said, noting some 13,000 Lambton residents still have no family doctor and filling that void would require roughly nine more physicians

“It’s great that we have many new funders, but we also are very successful, which really hasn’t given as much of a safety net in terms of sustainability,” she said.

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Enniskillen has been contributing for about five years, Point Edward for more than 10, and Sarnia since the organization’s inception, she said.

The agency announced its latest recruit, Dr. Emiloju Edalere-Lukula, was coming to Sarnia in March. He’s among those accepting new patients; visit sarniamedicalgroup.comor the office at 494 Cristina St., for details.

He arrives as the need to replace retiring doctors has slowed somewhat, Cox said. “We still have a number of physicians we do expect to retire in the next few years, but right now we are actually in a good position where we are looking to bring new family physicians to (take on) . . . unattached patients.”

Priority is given to funding communities, she said, noting people travel between communities for medical care.

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“Each of the municipalities have a vested interest in sustaining our program,” she said, calling it an investment in both residents’ care and the area’s economic well-being.

“Physician recruitment is critical and our municipalities need to be on board. . . for it to be successful and sustainable,” she said.

Bluewater Health also has been working with Blue Coast to recruit family physicians with hospital privileges to fill the void left by retirements, the hospital group’s medical advisory committee said in a report last month.

Along with anesthesiologists, surgeons, hospitalists, psychiatrists, emergency physicians and others, Bluewater Health hopes to recruit five family doctors with hospital privileges, it says. Two have been recruited so far.

“Without the support of family physicians treating their own inpatients and participating in the on-call schedules, additional hospitals would be required,” it says.

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