New incentive plan to recruit family doctors in the works
‘We’re competing with other municipalities — and they’re just throwing money at the problem’
City councillors are poised to try a new approach to attracting family physicians to Peterborough between now and the end of 2025, and it doesn’t include hiring a professional physician recruiter.
Instead, it involves developing a new set of cash incentives for doctors who recruit other doctors, states a city staff report from chief administrative officer (CAO) Jasbir Raina, or for those who have a high number of patients on their rosters.
The report also states the city could try to use cash incentives to encourage Peterborough natives who study medicine to come back to their hometown to practice.
Sarah McDougall Perrin, the city’s adviser for government relations, told councillors at a committee meeting Tuesday that other incentives are also possible. Realtors could potentially be sought to help a new doctor find a house, for instance, or other professionals could help the doctor’s spouse in their local job search.
There’s also a new think tank — made up of only local doctors — that would be consulted for ideas, Raina’s report notes.
Coun. Don Vassiliadis called it “a made-in-Peterborough” approach to physician recruiting — and he further said it’s “very unique” among Ontario municipalities to have a doctors’ think tank (which doesn’t include politicians, for instance, or any type of administrators).
The plan doesn’t include six-figure cash incentives to doctors who set up here. Peterborough currently offers doctors $15,000 over three years to come here, and the idea is to stick with that.
Coun. Alex Bierk said that if Peterborough is not offering cash incentives on par with other cities — Kingston offers $100,000 to doctors for a five-year commitment, for example — then he needed far more detail about the incentives that will be offered to get doctors to come to Peterborough.
“There’s not enough teeth in it (the plan), for me to really understand what this will do for us, as a city,” he said.
But Mayor Jeff Leal said that offering six-figure bonuses to doctors to locate here is “a race to the bottom.”
“And we can’t compete in a race to the bottom,” he said.
Coun. Kevin Duguay said he likes the new Peterborough approach because it shows doctors they’re stepping into a community where they can become immediately wellconnected — with a home, for instance, or a job for the spouse.
“We’re competing with other municipalities — and they’re just throwing money at the problem,” Duguay said. “Our approach is vastly different. We’re offering and providing our community.”
For years, the city has hired an outside agency — most recently Peterborough & the Kawarthas Economic Development — to conduct doctor recruitment for Peterborough.
Professional recruiters are paid to carry out activities such as promote Peterborough online to medical students, for example, and set up booths at events for medical students. But last year, councillors decided that’s not working and asked city staff to come up with a new approach.
That new plan was outlined to councillors at a committee meeting Tuesday night and then councillors unanimously gave it preliminary approval, with a final vote to come at a council meeting later this month.
Details of CAO Raina’s approach are outlined in his report to councillors. In addition to the new incentive program, the city would hire an in-house physician recruitment co-ordinator to work on contract, between now and the end of 2025, to act as the “one main contact for physician recruitment at the city of Peterborough.”
That person would be asked to design the incentive program, for example, consult with the doctors’ think tank and track down students originally from Peterborough who are in medical school outside the city.
In addition, the co-ordinator would work with the city’s in-house communications team to develop social media posts and video, for example, to market Peterborough to medical students.
The approach will require $580,000. If councillors approve it in a final vote later this month, city staff will do the following to bring together that money:
■ Draw $350,000 from the city’s physician recruitment reserve fund of $403,146 (leaving $53,146 in the reserve).
■ Use $100,000 already set aside to honour three-year cash bonus agreements (for $5,000 annually, over three years) that the city already has in place, with several doctors.
■ Use $226,021 that city council had approved in the 2024 budget for doctor recruitment but didn’t pay to anyone (because it voted in October to terminate its arrangement with PKED and seek a new doctor recruitment approach from city staff).