A need to help about 3,000 residents here connect with a family doctor has spurred an effort to restart a physician recruiting campaign that worked 20 years ago.
WALLACEBURG – A need to help about 3,000 residents here connect with a family doctor has spurred an effort to restart a physician recruiting campaign that worked 20 years ago.
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“It’s a fairly large portion of Wallaceburg that don’t have a family physician,” said Rob Watson, co-chair of a $100,000 campaign by the Chatham-Kent Family Health Team’s Wallaceburg campus aiming to attract three doctors to the community.
Watson helped lead the charge 20 years when Wallaceburg, Chatham, Dresden, Ridgetown and Tilbury collectively raised about $1.2 million to offer incentives that drew 40 doctors, including 20 family physicians and 20 specialists and hospitalists.
“We were recruiting 20 years ago, because we saw it. . . a number of doctors were going to retire and we were going to be doctorless,” Watson said.
Two decades later, the situation isn’t as serious, he said, but the goal is to get out ahead of it.
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“We’ve got to redouble our efforts and set plans for the next 20 years,” Watson said.
Explaining why such recruitment is needed is a key aspect of the campaign, he said. Many people who earn far less than doctors will naturally ask why they have to donate to attract doctors.
Virtually every Ontario community, large or small, is facing a shortage and looking to attract doctors, he said.
Two decades ago, competition for doctor recruitment was so intense, some communities were offering free homes or cars or a rent-free facility for their practice for a year or more, Watson recalled.
Many new doctors graduate medical school with hundreds of millions of dollars of debt, making it hard to get financing to establish a practice, so they have an “urgent need to get into practice,” he said.
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But it can take months to build a roster of patients before they earn enough money to pay the bills, he added.
OHIP billing doesn’t just pay the doctor; it also must cover staff salaries and practice operating expenses.
A total of $14,500 was raised during some fundraising events Tuesday in Wallaceburg, said recruitment campaign co-chairperson Greg Hetherington, who was involved in doctor recruitment 20 years ago.
He said it has been a relatively easy sell to raise the funds.
“I think the education people have now is much better than before,” Hetherington said. “They know. . . kind of what’s happening with the medical system, that you need to help pay for some of the expenses that doctors incur when they move to a community.”
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The local campaign aims to provide such incentives as covering moving or living expenses while a doctor establishes a roster of patients.
Once a doctor makes a commitment and some start-up costs are covered, “then we get a doctor for usually five years or more,” Watson said.
“And if they fall in love with the community then it’s for life,” he added. “That’s the kind of thing we want.”
Attracting new doctors goes beyond benefiting residents without a doctor.
Watson said during the campaign 20 years ago, it was “ferreted out” that for every doctor coming to a community, their practice provided an estimated $1 million a year in ancillary benefits.
This includes hiring a nurse and other staff, paying rent, prescribing drugs, sending patients to other specialists, along with buying a house and groceries, he said.
He hasn’t looked at the latest figures for this economic spinoff, but expects it’s higher now.
Wallaceburg is undertaking this fundraiser, but Watson said he’s hearing other Chatham-Kent communities are interested in doing the same thing. There may be more fundraisers in the future in other communities with a CK family health team campus.
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