PerSPeCtive on health Care

Need for Family Physicians Continues

Having access to health care professionals – specifically primary care is critical to the well-being of the residents living in our community. Unfortunately, many families both locally and across the province, do not have the benefit of being under the care of a family practitioner. It is during times like this that the need for family physicians becomes more evident and important.

The Chamber’s Family Physician Recruitment Program is a critical community initiative, not only for our residents’ welfare but for the health and prosperity of our business community who are looking to attract the best and the brightest talent to our Region.

With the generous investment and support of our corporate and municipal partners, the Chamber’s Family Physician Recruitment Program is able to participate in a number of programs and events throughout the year to attract new family physicians to serve the health care needs of this community. Since this critical initiative was launched in 1998, the Chamber, working with community interests, has successfully attracted over 250 family practitioners. This year alone, we have had several physicians who have made practice commitments here in Kitchener Waterloo. We could not have achieved such great results without your support.

Throughout the year we have been working with new to practice family physicians as well as established family practitioners from across Ontario and Canada. Though we haven’t been able to plan in person visits since March, we have been busy connecting and arranging virtual tours and meetings. We have been very successful recruiting during these unprecedented times.

We also continue to work with several physicians nearing retirement and beginning to think about transitioning out of practice. These physicians are starting the process of looking for prospective physicians to take over their practice. We encourage retiring physicians to start their search well in advance and provide them with the necessary resources to ensure a smooth transition. It can take some time for a retiring physician to find a replacement. Many of the new to practice physicians start their practices out small (under 1000 patient roster) and gradually increase it over time. With many retiring doctors having a larger patient roster size of 2500 plus, we are in need of 2-2.5 doctors per retiring physician’s practice to account for all of the patients.

We also assist the local hospitals in their efforts to recruit and retain emergency physicians and specialists. We continue to host the emergency physician residents in our Annual Family/ Emergency Medicine Resident Weekend, and they have had great success filling their openings.

Our successes and efforts would not be possible if it weren’t for our generous corporate, municipal, and personal sponsors and supporters of this program. On behalf of the Family Physician Recruitment Program, we sincerely thank our partners for their generous and continued support as we strive to eliminate the physician shortage in KitchenerWaterloo.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jenna Petker

Jenna is Physician Recruitment Lead for the Greater Kitchener Waterloo Chamber of Commerce.