By Mike Renzella
The Haldimand Press
HALDIMAND—Like most municipalities in the province, Haldimand is feeling the pressures of an ongoing physician shortage. One of the major items of importance laid out for this term of Council is to explore options for solving that shortage.
Last week, General Manager of Community & Development Services Mike Evers laid out a series of options for Council to consider toward this goal. They are:
1a: Retaining a recruitment specialist
As per Evers, “That could be external in the form of a consulting firm or consultant, or it could be adding to the staff complement, bringing someone in as a dedicated in-house resource.”
County staff have recommended a minimum three-year commitment for the role based on their research, with Evers noting, “That’s the minimum amount of time it takes to get a program set up and get some traction out there within the sector.”
1b: Retaining shared recruitment specialists through the Greater Hamilton Health Network (GHHN)
This would see Haldimand partnering with Hamilton and Niagara Northwest, pooling money and resources together to work on bringing physicians to all three areas. On this option, Evers noted, “It’s a shared resource, so they wouldn’t be focused 100% on Haldimand County.”
2: Recruiting a headhunter
This person would effectively try to “lure doctors and physicians from other established practices elsewhere in the province and beyond, and trying to convince them to come to Haldimand County,” said Evers.
3: Utilization of financial incentives to attract talent to the county
Evers commented, “A number of municipalities have done this. It’s a cash incentive; it’s a service agreement where an individual commits to staying for a period of time, and in exchange for that commitment to stay for four, five, six years, there’s a cash incentive that is provided. Incentive sizes out there are between $100-150,000 spread over a four-to-six-year term.”
4: Retaining the status quo
At this time the status quo refers to the efforts of Haldimand’s Physician Recruitment Retention Committee, of which Evers is a member, in addition to both local hospital CEOs. However, Evers noted that the large commitments that come with the task are proving tough for the two CEOs on top of their other work-related commitments.
Of the five options, Evers advised Council to consider 1a or 1b: “A dedicated resource is the best way to go about this…. If you want to get into this space, there needs to be someone who can build a program, build relationships, that can get into the universities and make connections with the students who are a year or two from coming out and entering into practice.”
Mayor Shelley Ann Bentley shared, “Right across Canada we have a shortage of physicians. We need to get in somehow, into high schools and colleges, and open it up to educate the children of Canada and Ontario specifically.”
She continued, “We’re getting offshore doctors in all the time taking up spaces in our universities, and they’re going to the United States or going back home after they’ve completed their schooling. Somehow, we have to push the Province into keeping our own children here and hopefully they’ll stick around in their community.”
With Haldimand’s councillors leaning toward option 1b, Councillor Rob Shirton asked, “Will Haldimand even be suggested as a place, given the other bigger centres and what they have to offer? Do you think it would be a fair playing field?”
Evers iterated that any such agreement would be based on the idea of equal treatment: “I have no reason to believe that we would not get our fair share of promotion, connections made.… That would all be built into whatever the shared resource agreement would look like.”
Shirton asked for a vote deferral to give staff some time to reach out to the other municipalities in GHHN to gauge interest in a shared recruitment plan, noting, “If they’re not even interested or don’t want to collaborate or don’t think they can get approval, we can pivot over to 1a and it still gives us time to get it in the budget for next spring.”
Evers replied, “I have no issues with the timeline, in terms of reaching out and asking the questions; the only uncertainty I have is how quick parties will be to respond. That said, we’ll work towards that date and … pester as much as we have to to get the information we’re looking for.”
Haldimand War Memorial Hospital CEO Sharon Moore shared her thoughts on exploring option 1b: “As part of the Physician Recruitment Task Force, we are dedicated to working together. I think in this day and age, part of what we’re hearing is that we need to work together with partnerships to succeed together. Anything we can do with other individuals or communities is always preferred, in terms of advancing healthcare as a whole.”
She warned, “I think we have to consider the burden if we’re short on family physicians on the rest of the healthcare system, including the existing family doctors.… We do know there’s a large portion of them planning to retire in the near future, and we are seeing people retire earlier than expected due to the heavy workload.”
Ultimately, Council voted in favour of pursuing option 1b, with a provision added that should 1b not work out, staff can pivot to option 1a, and proceed forward without the need for the matter to return to Council again.
