Rural Manitoba taxpayers spend $250K to find physicians

Civic leaders in theKillarney-TurtleMountain area banded together and spent $250,000 torecruit and hire two international physicians. Their aim was tosolve the community's perennial doctor shortage.

"We've been going short with sporadic, around-the-clock care at our facility now for several years," said Killarney-Turtle Mountain Mayor Rick Pauls, who was part of the 15-member doctor recruitment committee for thesouthwestern area.

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The committee hired a professional executive searchcompany to findphysicians who would beinterested to live inthe community long-term.

"We were selling our community as much as we were their employment opportunity," he said.

Two physicians, one from England and one from Ireland, have been hired.One is likely to arrive in the fall and the other in early winter, Pauls said.

"We specifically chose those two countries because we felt that culturally it would be a good fit to our community," he said.

"By doing it site-specific for us, we think that once they land, they're going to stay," he said.

These two new physicians will sign a four-year agreement like other international physicians. He saidone doctorhas already talked about building a new home and the other has talked about buying one.

"That's something that we never hear from international medical grads," he said. "They're looking for something to rent and they usually buy a home from Toronto as soon as they land in Canada, they come and put their time in with us. The day that their four years is up, they're gone."

Killarney appealed to the physicians because they wanted to work in a community with at least four other colleagues to spread out their on-call schedule, Pauls said.

The region currently has three full-time and one part-time physicians.

The $250,000 of taxpayer money used to recruitphysicians was well worth it, Pauls said.

"This was a win-win for our community."