Timmins hospital offering some locum doctors more than $4K per day

The Timmins and District Hospital is offering locums more than $4,000 per day in an online recruitment campaign on social media.

Locums are visiting doctors who fill in for physicians who are on leave or holidays. Hospitals across northern Ontario rely on locums to keep emergency departments and other important services running.

The Timmins and District Hospital is offering internal medicine locums a minimum daily rate of $2,330 along with an additional incentive of $2,000 a day to work at the hospital.

The ad also highlights flexible scheduling and paid travel days as incentives for visiting doctors.

The hospital says it is looking for "urgent coverage" for the week of June 2 to 8.

In a separate ad, the Timmins and District Hospital is offering the same incentives for a general surgery locum, at a minimum daily rate of $2,430 and an additional incentive of $2,000 per day.

The hospital says it needs a general surgery locum for June 10 to 12 and for June 19 to 22.

"Our hospital is supported through a blend of locum and full-time physicians who support patients in a variety of health services," hospital spokesperson Stephanie Banks said in an email to CBC News.

"Occasionally, some gaps occur in our scheduled coverage, and our hospital will offer incentives to close those gaps. Additionally, our hospital also has back-up contingency strategies to ensure the continuity of care for all our patients."

Andrew Longhurst, a health policy researcher at Simon Fraser University, says the compensation packages many hospitals offer locums, coupled with a reliance on more expensive agency nurses, is not a long-term plan.

"It's not a sustainable model for our public system. It's very costly," he said.

Longhurst says a reliance on locums speaks to physician recruitment challenges many hospitals face.

Most physicians working in Ontario hospitals are essentially contractors and operate under the fee-for-service model, in which they bill the province for each service they provide.

Some work as salaried employees though, which is a model that is more common with certain specialties, such as oncology.

"We have a growing body of evidence in Canada that an increasing share of physicians do not want to work as independent contractors," Longhurst said.

"They are seeking practice models that better reflect their desire to have more work-life balance, to not be business owners, to not be responsible for running and managing a business, their own clinic."

Longhurst says that by addressing those concerns the provincial government, and hospitals could improve physician retention and reduce their dependence on locums.