County Docs

New initiative to recruit and retain County physicians

In 2022, the County lost five of its family physicians, leaving thousands of residents without a primary healthcare provider. This year, three more physicians are expected to retire, further compounding the problem. Last week, the County, the Prince Edward Family Health Organization (PEFHO), the Prince Edward Family Health Team (PEFHT), the Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital Foundation and Quinte Health announced the formation of County Docs, a program to recruit new physicians to the County as well as retain the ones currently here. The program is led by Adam Hambly, who is a Respiratory Technologist and certified Respiratory educator, with 10 years experience of providing health care in the County and surrounding area. He says he is passionate about living in the County, and very concerned about the physician shortage, and he is approaching the recruitment and retention program from the perspective of a health care provider, as distinct from a typical HR angle. He says the physician shortage is the culmination of a number of factors. “I think it’s important to note we never had trouble recruiting physicians until a couple of years ago, probably around 2020 when things started to get difficult for us,” he says. “The pandemic was going on, and healthcare was going through quite a strain at the time. This shortage is not specific to the County: it is a national shortage.”

“From the lens of the County, a lot of physicians approached retirement at about the same time. We’ve had a huge cluster that have retired, and more are retiring this year. We saw this exodus happen at a time when it was difficult to find replacement physicians. There is stiff competition between provinces and municipalities, with a variety of incentives being offered by mature and well-funded recruitment programs, and we entered the recruitment scene much later than others.”

One of the difficulties has to do with the rural nature of the County. Physicians here have additional responsibilities of staffing the emergency department and the hospital, serving as directors for the long-term care homes, as well as providing care in hospice. Another problem is the lack of affordable housing, particularly for what is known as locums—physicians who provide temporary coverage for doctors who are on leave or are away from their practice for an extended time. The availability of a locum is one of the factors that make recruiting permanent physicians easier. “In Prince Edward County it’s challenging because these locum physicians are here temporarily and they are looking at short-term accommodation, which we know is astronomically expensive. So these physicians are saying ‘It doesn’t make financial sense for me to come and locum for you. I’m going to spend too much on accommodation.’ Not having a locum available created burnout on our team, and it doesn’t make the County an attractive option,” says Hambly

Hambly has been in the position of physician recruiter for only six months, and he and his team are building the framework of the retention and recruitment program. They are developing a marketing and communication strategy, and have attended or are planning to attend events such as fairs and conferences where they can recruit physicians, either ones that have been newly licensed or ones with an established practice. There has already been a couple of promising leads that they are following. They are also supporting physicians that are currently working here, advocating for their needs as a way to retain their services. They have secured a one-year locum for a physician who retired in 2022, and have established a Doctor Accommodation Network with homeowners who will provide flexible lease options and reasonable rental rates for locum physicians. In the past, the County had been quite successful in recruiting residents—physicians in training—to work here, but in recent years it has been less so. “Unfortunately, COVID-19 interrupted much of our engagement with [residents] over the past couple of years. In addition we are seeing a lot of international residents or members of a visible minority, and they often prefer more urban centres, as many physicians do. It’s not easy to recruit physicians to provide rural medicine. There are different responsibilities, and sometimes a different approach to care,” says Hambly.

For County residents without a primary health care provider, Hambly strongly recommends that they register with Health Care Connect. This is a provincial service that attempts to match people seeking physicians with physicians who are accepting new patients into their practice. For those in need of health care, there are walk-in clinics in neighbouring communities, and recently the province has announced that pharmacists can issue prescriptions for a number of common ailments. In an emergency, there is the Emergency Room at the Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital.

The County Docs program is partially funded by the municipality, plus a one-time donation from the physician group, and through the Hospital Foundation. The program is in need of sustainable funding, and donations can be made at the PECMHF website, pecmhf.ca. There will be an information meeting about the physician recruitment and retention program at the Wellington Legion on Wednesday, January 18 at 6:30 p.m.