The La Ronge Health Centre includes long-term care, emergency care and other services. (Derek Cornet/larongeNOW Staff)

By Derek Cornet

health care

La Ronge doctor believes province needs to do more to retain physicians

Mar 17, 2023 | 4:53 PM

La Ronge’s Dr. Elliot Wilkinson, the area division lead for local physicians, believes more needs to be done to retain doctors in northern and rural communities.

On Wednesday, Premier Scott Moe announced an increase to the Rural Physician Incentive Program by offering $200,000 over five years, a boost from $47,000 over four years to work in such places. Doctors already practicing in those areas are also now eligible for the incentive where previously it was only available to new grads.

The new dollars are four times the previous incentive and some of the highest in Canada.

“I think it is a really enticing offer and I think it shows that the province is aware of the difficulty in recruiting physicians to work in rural and remote communities, but I feel like it’s not addressing the other half of the issue, which is actually the retention of physicians in these communities,” Wilkinson said.

“In La Ronge, we actually seem to struggle more with the retention. We have a lot of success with recruiting physicians who trained with us in our residency program or who have done some part of their training here, but sometimes they leave one to two years into practicing with us. We are always really sad to see them go because they have been such a good addition to the practice, but for whatever reason, it just hasn’t worked out long-term.”

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There are currently 18 physicians providing regular service in La Ronge, but of those, only 10 or 11 are full time. The province offers funding for 13 full-time doctors, but even if that number was reached, Wilkinson explained that still wouldn’t be enough to meet the needs of the population served. She thinks La Ronge would need up to 16 doctors do to so.

Aside from the La Ronge Medical Clinic, doctors also work at the La Ronge Health Centre, long-term care facilities and provide outlying clinics in Pinehouse, Southend and Stanley Mission. If residents are having issues with seeing a doctor, Wilkinson noted it is due to just not having enough doctors available.

“In my mind, we really need to work on making rural living more enticing long-term for physicians, so like helping physician’s partners find meaningful employment, encouraging physicians to get involved in their communities outside of work, rewarding them for staying long-term in communities and not burning them out with so much work that they don’t have time to enjoy actually living in the community,” Wilkinson said.

“It’s also easier to recruit an occasional new doctor when staffing is good. I would imagine it is actually less expensive to retain physicians than to actually invest all this money in recruitment. I think it is a great initiative, but it would be great to see something kind of focusing on the other half of the problem.”

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derek.cornet@pattisonmedia.com

Twitter: @saskjourno