MP Brown Slams McGuinty for Proposed Doctor Cuts in Barrie

August 21, 2009

MP Brown is extremely concerned by the McGuinty Government’s recent proposal to remove Barrie’s “Underserviced Area Designation” for doctor recruitment.

Having this designation taken away will cause the Barrie Area Physician Recruitment Task Force to lose the only source of provincial government funding that directly supports physician recruitment and will severely compromise Barrie’s ability to compete for physicians.

Physician recruitment is an issue close to MP Brown’s heart ever since his days on Barrie City Council.  As a Councilor, Brown represented Barrie as a member of the physician recruitment task force and continually championed the City to help further fund the task force.  MP Brown has set up a Scholarship Fund and travels every fall to each medical school with staff from RVH to highlight the benefits of living in Barrie.
 
While our recruitment initiative has been very successful, having recruited more than 150 physicians to our community, we continue to suffer chronic shortages in a number of medical specialties, most significantly in family medicine.

As a designated Underserviced Area we have been able to access UAP program benefits for our:

• Family Physician Community Assessment visit program
• Incentive Grant for family physicians
• Tuition Reimbursement for newly graduated family physicians and specialists

UAP funding money directly supports our recruits and provides the only incentives available to the Physician Recruitment Office to offer physicians who are considering practice in our community.

The result of these cuts will be a much lower number of physician recruits per year because our ability to compete for physician recruits will be severely compromised.

If this plan by the McGuinty Government to change the UAP program goes ahead the annual budget of the Barrie Area Physician Recruitment Task Force will need to substantially increase to make up the loss.

MP Brown wonders today how much more City of Barrie taxpayers should be asked to pay to recruit doctors while at the same time the province plans to pull funding from our community.

“We've worked too hard for too long, and achieved too much success in terms of recruitment of family doctors and specialists in the past three years, to accept this backward step from a government that has provided little help to this local effort." stated Dr. Rob Ballagh. (Local ENT Surgeon and Founding Chair of Physician Recruitment Task Force in Barrie)

“McGunity’s proposals have come out of nowhere” said MP Brown. “He didn’t campaign on stabbing Barrie in the back or on damaging health care in our Region.  His proposed reforms will severely reduce the physician population in our City and we already have 30,000 residents without a family doctor.” added Brown