Easing doctor recruitment or abandoning rural? Government, opposition debate changes

Opposition parties went after the government during question period Tuesday saying a government amendment would hurt health care in rural P.E.I.

If Bill 69 passes, the amendment would axe the province's physician resource planning committee as well as the complement of doctors assigned to each region.

The province as well as Health P.E.I. CEO Dr. Michael Gardam say the move would cut barriers that are now dragging out P.E.I.'s recruitment and retention initiative.

But the opposition parties aren't buying it, saying the amendment will see more doctors moving to Summerside and Charlottetown.

"By removing [the complement] altogether is not going to be, I guess, giving me any security knowing that doctors are going to West Prince," Liberal MLA Hal Perry told CBC News.

"I am not convinced by Dr. Gardam's suggestion that [this will help recruitment and retention], I absolutely think the otherwise — that it will be a deterioration of health care that is delivered in a timely and quality manner for West Prince residents."

Green MLA Michele Beaton also pressed the minister on how this amendment would affect rural Islanders.

With the complement to be removed if the bill passes, Beaton said she's concerned that rural P.E.I. will see more doctors heading to urban areas.

"If you remove that out of legislation, potentially, instead of say moving a physician who would work at the Western Hospital to the O'Leary Community Hospital, they would now have the potential of moving that complement, that physician, from Western Hospital to Charlottetown," Beaton said.

"Once you lose that complement, once you lose that physician, you may never get it back."

Beaton and Perry also brought up how last November the province ended the shift incentives for doctors to work in the Western Hospital emergency department. That program was dropped, the province said, due to doctors sometimes choosing to work at the Western Hospital ER rather than Prince County Hospital and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital — which led to more risk of service limitations in the two 24/7 emergency departments. 

Beaton said this is an example of where government's priorities are in health care.

"It just shows that the priority is to not fill shifts in any of the rural hospitals, the priority of this government is to fill shifts in urban centres," Beaton said. 

'Eliminate as much red tape as possible'

Health Minister Ernie Hudson said the amendment will streamline physician recruitment and retention and that it will not affect the number of doctors working in rural P.E.I. 

He echoed the point Dr. Gardam told CBC News last week, that removing the bureaucracy involved in the recruitment process — through such things as the physician resource planning committee — will allow the province to hire doctors faster.

The committee currently has to meet to approve each new doctor hired on the Island, a process that can easily take months, Hudson said. During that processing time, another province may scoop up that doctor from Prince Edward Island.

"Every jurisdiction, every province and territory is facing challenges," Hudson said. "We need, as a province, to be able to take down any barriers, eliminate as much red tape as possible."

Currently, the complement of doctors in rural P.E.I. isn't being met, Hudson said. Regardless, Hudson said that the  physician resource planning committee has outlived its usefulness in the recruitment process.

"We were at full complement, we're not right at this point in time," he said. "We want to be able to recruit as many physicians as we can. We don't want to have any barriers that could potentially result in us turning doctors away from P.E.I."