Cash incentives not enough to attract clinicians to rural Canada, doctor says

Quinte West, a small town in southern Ontario, is offering $100,000 in financial incentives to doctors who agree to practise there for five years.

The small Ontario town is one of many rural communities across the country that are currently offering cash incentives to physicians in the hopes of attracting them to practise long term.

Newfoundland and Labrador, for example, has set up a $100,000 ‘come home’ bonus to doctors who were born, educated and trained in the province then moved away, to come back and set up shop.

Dr. Fraser Mackay, the New Brunswick representative to the Society of Rural Physicians of Canada, says 20 per cent of Canadians live in rural areas, but only nine per cent of doctors work rurally.

Mackay told CTV’s Your Morning on Wednesday that, compared to other countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Canada ranks “pretty much dead last in terms of the number of physicians per capita and wait times for procedures.”

Because Canada has so few physicians in rural areas, doctors working rurally can experience more pressure and stress compared to doctors in urban areas.

“It's a little more akin to being a generalist physician,” Mackay says, “with increasing closures in smaller hospitals, smaller departments, dwindling resources and increasingly overwhelming administrative burden.”

Doctors working rurally often face a financial, moral and professional challenge if they want to take a vacation or go to a conference, Mackay says, “because if you leave, you're leaving the community with no doctor for as long as you're gone.”

In 2021, the College of Family Physicians published the Rural Roadmap for Action, a guiding document for policymakers and healthcare workers to combat the lack of doctors practicing in rural Canada. The Rural Roadmap for Action focused on the need to recruit medical students from rural areas as well as train doctors from urban centres in rural areas.

“If you're asking a physician to commit for the long term, money really isn't the guiding feature. A doctor needs to be in love with the community they're in and that is what is going to keep them there.”