Premier Brad Wall announced new funding to attract more recently-graduated physicians to rural Saskatchewan communities and improve patients' access to physician services.
The new Rural Physician Incentive Program will provide $120,000 in funding over five years to recent medical graduates who establish practice in rural communities of 10,000 or less.
"Recruiting doctors to rural areas and keeping them once they're here is a huge priority for our government," Wall says.
"We've had some really solid success, increasing the Saskatchewan's overall physician supply, but there are challenges in rural communities. This program will help improve patient access to physician services in rural areas."
Eligible physicians will receive a payment at the end of each year of practice, with payments gradually increasing over the five-year period.
Newly-graduated doctors typically finish studies with a large debt load due to their many years of education. The incentive is designed to help ease that burden.
The program will be retroactive to April 1, 2012, and will be open to both Canadian and international medical graduates. It will be administered by saskdocs, the province's Physician Recruitment Agency.
The Rural Physician Incentive Program is among a number of initiatives underway to address physician recruitment and retention. Training and residency seats have been added to the College of Medicine in Saskatoon, more international doctors are coming to Saskatchewan through a new assessment process (Saskatchewan International Physician Practice Assessment, or SIPPA) that accepts applications from a wider range of countries, and more physicians are being trained in rural Saskatchewan, recognizing that experiencing a rural lifestyle increases the chance that they will stay for a longer term.
Over 2,000 physicians are currently working in the province.
