Record number of physicians working in Manitoba

Manitoba has broken the record for the number of practising physicians for another consecutive year.

Currently, there are more than 3,700 physicians in practice, the highest number in Manitoba’s history, Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara announced Thursday.

“It is the direct result of us working with our partners, like Doctors Manitoba, like our universities, and doctors themselves, to get to this point,” Asagwara said Thursday. “And, as a government, our priority is on building on this good news and this good work.”

Doctors Manitoba president Dr. Alon Altman welcomed the milestone.

“We’re recruiting doctors at a record rate, and now we have to step up our game and keep them for the longer term,” Altman said in the release.

Doctors Manitoba’s 2025 physicians report listed an increase of 164 doctors for a total number of 3,498 physicians.

That report says the number of physicians has grown every year for more than two decades, but 2025’s net increase was the largest on record.

At the time, the organization said the province had lost an average of 155 physicians annually over the previous five years owing to departures or retirement.

Manitoba had 225 physicians per 100,000 residents last year and was ranked seventh among the 10 provinces. British Columbia was ranked first with 271 physicians per 100,000 residents.

Manitoba has “gone from among the lowest rates of primary care access in Canada to the highest,” the minister said.

A 2025 Our Care national survey concluded Manitoba led the country in terms of access to primary care since nearly 89 per cent of Manitobans reported they had a regular care provider.

In both 2024 and 2025, the graduating class of University of Manitoba’s Max Rady College of Medicine had 140 medical students.

In 2023, the former Progressive Conservative government announced it would add 40 medical school training spots, with the goal of increasing the number of students per year to 150 from 110. Fifteen seats were added in 2023 and another 15 were added in 2024.

The opposition PCs didn’t repond to a request for comment.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca