Task force in Oxford County works to recruit physicians to fill vacancies and replace retiring doctors
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It’s no secret that there is a doctor shortage in Oxford County.
And with family doctors moving, dying, and shutting down their practices, it's crunch time.
The Oxford County Physician Recruitment Task Force is hoping to make that problem a thing of the past.
“The ultimate goal of the committee is to recruit sufficient physicians to satisfy the need in Oxford County,” said Dr. Gerry Rowland, who practices in Tillsonburg and chairs the task force.
Before the group was formed, hospitals, private practices, and medical centres all focused on their own recruitment.
“A bunch of people looked at it and said ‘we’re all fighting the same fight. You want doctors, we want doctors, everybody wants doctors,’” said A.J. Wells, manager of medical services at Norwich Medical Centre.
“Why have everybody locally competing for the same people? If we work together chances are we’ll able to increase the profile – rather than saying ‘come to Norwich’ we can say ‘come to Oxford County.’”
That’s why the group – which includes representatives from all three of the region’s hospitals as well as medical centres and other stakeholders – is focused on attracting new talent.
“(We want) to raise the profile of Oxford County for new physicians or recently graduated physicians or new physicians to Canada, with the goal that if they’re looking at relocating or setting up a practice they would give serious consideration to Oxford County,” said Brad Hammond, development officer for the city and a member of the task force.
It’s definitely a timely issue.
“We know there’s a looming issue of physician shortages in Oxford County, just based on the general age of our current physicians – no one works forever,” Hammond said.
The county will need to hire about two dozen new family physicians in the next five years just to cover those that are retiring, Rowland said.
“That’s a little bit frightening,” he said.
Wells said new physicians are often hesitant to set up a private practice without first “test driving” a community. The management or administration work can also be a deterrent, Rowland said.
Young docs may also be more attracted to bustling urban centres than rural regions like Oxford.
But Rowland said the county is a great place to work.
“I’ve practiced here for 36 years now, it is a very nice place to practice, both in Woodstock, Ingersoll, and Tillsonburg and Tavistock.”
Early in 2015, Oxford County council approved a $10,000 community grant to support physician recruitment.
The funding will help support the group – formed about a year and a half ago – with its efforts to bring more doctors to the county.
One of the first goals is to create an attractive website to showcase the available positions for doctors and other medical staff. The committee will piggyback on the new WorkinOxford.ca site and utilize the same ‘back end’ operations.
The next step is advertising and promotion.
“We’re hoping to actually get out and do some activities this fall, in terms of going to the medical schools and meeting with some of the doctors that will be graduating shortly,” Hammond said.
A needs assessment showed that thousands of residents in the county don’t have a family doctor, Wells said.
In the past four years, two Oxford County physicians have died while still actively practicing, and six physicians have retired (or will soon) without having another doctor to take over their practice.
That’s not counting doctors who have moved their practice outside the county.
To compound the problem, it usually takes 1.5 to 2 new doctors to take over the practice of a retiring physician, Wells explained.
“That’s simply due to lifestyle, work-life balance. You’re seeing fewer and fewer physicians these days that want to have the two, three, four-thousand patient practices, and understandably so.”