Doctor shortage demands bold action

The solution to the doctor shortage has everything to do with provincial finances and the discipline to properly fund a program dealing with the doctor shortage. It is hard to imagine a graduating doctor wanting to establish a practice in Greater Victoria given the cost of housing and the cost of living, and the debt they have taken on in becoming an MD.

It will cost the provincial treasury significant amounts of capital, but unless action is taken, the doctor shortage will only increase, at a time when the aging population is increasing dramatically.

If a graduating doctor or a doctor willing to relocate from out of province will practise as a family physician in the province for a minimum of five years, the province should pay off their total student debt. Doctors should be provided a grant of up to $1 million to access accommodation. The province should also fund doctors up to $500,000 to allow them to either purchase a practice or establish a new office.

It would be costly, but any other system is simply tinkering with a hiring process that is not working.

Doctors need to be guaranteed a properly financed lifestyle, after many difficult and expensive years in obtaining a degree. A family physician runs a private enterprise and it is not acceptable that financial pressures detract from their major goal of treating patients.

We need to extricate ourselves from a continuing doctor shortage by taking dramatic financial action.