'It really helped us': Official in southwestern Man. laments end of doctor recruitment cost-sharing initiative

A top official in a southwestern Manitoba municipality says he's worried about recruiting future doctors after the provincial regional health authority servicing the area ended a cost-sharing program for physician recruitment.

Finding doctors for Glenboro-South Cypress, a municipality of just over 1,100 people located 160 kilometres southwest of Winnipeg, has always been challenging, says Deputy Mayor Ed Bedford. He says the Prairie Mountain Health cost-sharing program that started in May 2023 helped.

"If we ever have to recruit another doctor it's going to make it a lot more challenging because it's expensive to do," Bedford said. "We're fighting right now to get our ER open more because we have doctors here now."

The municipality received a letter from the regional health authority at the end of June that the program is ending, but that current contracts would be honoured.

Right now, Glenboro-South Cypress has two doctors — including a locum, or placeholder, physician. The municipality is currently recruiting another doctor through the incentive program.

The Glenboro area community and health action committee raised $130,000 to cover half the costs of recruitment and Prairie Mountain Health paid the other half.

"It really helped us in the long run," Bedford said.

Waiting on doctors

In an email, Prairie Mountain Health CEO Treena Slate said partnerships with communities saw recruitment firms hired to help find out-of-region physicians. There are agreements with Killarney, Glenboro, Roblin, Grandview, and Hamiota.

Fiscal challenges played a role in ending the cost-sharing partnerships, she said.

To date, no physicians have arrived in the province through the program.

Killarney-Turtle Mountain mayor Janice Smith says two physicians from the U.K. were recruited by the Winnipeg firm Waterford Global with funding from the initiative. They'll arrive in Killarney in the fall.

Killarney's complement is five doctors, Smith said. Currently, there are two physicians, two on the way, and another in talks of coming to the community.

This is the second time the community has successfully used a recruitment incentive. Smith said in 2016 the municipality was able to bring in a doctor who still lives in the community.

"We've been extremely successful in recruitment and I am a big advocate of it," Smith said. "We're just going to have to be a little more creative ... it's not going to affect us right now, we'll just deal with it as it comes."

Hamiota Mayor Randy Lints says they're looking to recruit a U.K. doctor through the incentive partnership. The regional health authority will cover 50 to 60 per cent of recruitment costs.

Currently, Hamiota has three full-time doctors, with a part-time doctor commuting from Rivers, located about 45 kilometres away. Lints expects by the end of the year there should be the equivalent of at least 4.5 doctors in place.

Ideally, at least five doctors are needed, Lints said. Past doctors have suggested having six or seven physicians to help ensure the ER is fully functional.

Hamiota is now focused on retention to ensure doctors and their families want to call the community home, permanently. A part of this is ensuring they have support in place at work.

"You can increase your doctors, but if you don't have the lab to go with it or you're short on nursing or short somewhere else, then you can have all the doctors in the world that you want — but that doesn't mean your ER is going to be open all the time, or it doesn't mean you won't have shortfalls," Lints said.

"It all comes together as a package."

Municipalities get creative

Killarney is now including doctor recruitment in its municipal budget, Smith said. They need to continually recruit because they don't "want to get behind the 8-ball," and fall short on health care, Smith said. 

The public shouldn't be critical of the incentive program ending, because there "are other forks in the fire," said Smith. She hopes new programs will build on the incentive initiative's success.

Slate said Westman still has a shortage of physicians.

Prairie Mountain Health has other recruitment efforts like "rural week" with medical students, domestic and international physician conferences, work-life balance initiatives in partnership with Doctors Manitoba, and the International Medical Graduate program, Slate said.

The health authority pointed to new provincial efforts to help with recruitment like the rural doctor recruitment grant program, funds to create medical training seats at Brandon University, increasing medical residency spots provincewide and a provincial recruitment office.

Bedford says Glenboro-South Cypress doesn't have the option to start a recruitment fund because money needs to go elsewhere in the municipality.

The biggest thing now is to get and keep doctors into rural communities so they keep ERs open, Bedford said. They can't afford to see its ER closed again, he added. 

"That's scary. We're on a major highway.… There's been major accidents," Bedford said.