More doctors in province, but it’s no ‘mission accomplished’

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This article was published 28/09/2017 (3096 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The number of family physicians working in Manitoba has grown by nine per cent over the past four years, new data to be released today by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) show.

The growth was most pronounced in the Southern Health region, where the ranks of family doctors grew to 171 in 2016 from 148 in 2012 — a 15.5 per cent increase.

By comparison, the Interlake-Eastern Regional Health Authority saw the largest decline, dropping by 13.2 per cent, from 91 to 79 family doctors. But the region’s officials hope that trend is reversing itself.

On Wednesday, they announced that 22 new doctors, including 19 family physicians, either are joining or have joined the Interlake area during the 2017 fiscal year. They’ve also confirmed 12 new hires, set to start sometime during the 2018 fiscal year.

“We still have a long way to go,” CEO Ron Van Denakker said, although that didn’t stop him from beaming during the Gimli announcement.

The new hires will make a significant dent in the region’s vacancy rate, in particular by bolstering ER staff.

“Certainly nobody is hanging up the ‘mission accomplished’ sign,” Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen said.

“There’s a lot more work to do, not just in terms of attracting new doctors but retaining the ones that are coming and the ones that are here. But I do think as long as we continue to make progress and increase the numbers, as we are, year-over-year that’s going to help all regions.”

Interlake’s new hires will join the ranks of the 2,748 doctors working in Manitoba as of 2016, a number that represents growth of more than three per cent from 2015, the CIHI report said.

That’s roughly a percentage point higher than the national growth average.

“The important component here is that the increase in the number of physicians is actually at a faster pace than the general population,” said Walter Feeney, CIHI’s program lead in physician information.

“That means we’re having more physicians per person than we had in the past.”

In Manitoba, most physicians are family doctors, not specialists. Of the more than 1,400 family doctors throughout the province, 911 work for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority.

Feeney said there was nothing surprising about Manitoba’s data this year.

“There are no standout anomalies that really said, ‘Oh, my… what’s going on here?’” he said, suggesting the data be viewed as just “an annual update.”

Feeney did note that physician clinical payments are continuing to slow down. In 2016, Manitoba doctors were paid a cumulative $912 million, up nearly two per cent from 2015.

That information is useful for provinces or territories, he said, given that each “will actually negotiate with medical associations for the different payment models and the fees they’re going to get paid for different services. This is information that can contribute to those discussions.”

jane.gerster@freepress.mb.ca