Southwestern Manitoba communities pay recruiting firm 6-figure sums to find doctors

Ed Bedford says his small town isn't giving up on its hospital — they're spending their own money to find a second doctor after they were down to zero not long ago.

"We weren't even sure if our hospital was going to stay open," said Bedford, deputy mayor of the municipality of Glenboro-South Cypress.

"We were down to the nurse practitioner, and there are limits to what they can do."

Glenboro-South Cypress, a municipality of just over 1,100 people about 160 kilometres west of Winnipeg, is one of several small communities in southwestern Manitoba spending tens of thousands of dollars on a recruiting firm in an effort to find doctors.

Officials in the municipalities of Hamiota and Killarney-Turtle Mountain also say they have hired Winnipeg-based recruiting firm Waterford Global. Prairie Mountain Health, their regional health authority, is splitting the cost, which can be anywhere from $90,000 to $150,000 per doctor.

The Glenboro Health Centre's emergency department closed six times in 2023, with the total closure time adding up to more than 56 days, say documents obtained by CBC under a freedom of information request.

Glenboro does have one doctor again after the health authority assigned an international doctor to the community, but Bedford doesn't think they'll get a second that way, because other communities also need doctors.

The area has a health action committee that raised enough funds to cover half the cost of hiring the recruiting firm, Bedford said.

"It would have [been] way better if the provincial government or whoever put up the money and got the doctors in here, but it's not happening," he said.

Treena Slate, CEO of Prairie Mountain Health — the health authority in southwestern Manitoba — said the region is short approximately 80 doctors.

Hiring a recruiting firm is expensive and the process can take a full year, but the health region has had to explore every avenue possible to fill the gap, she said.

"We want to make sure that communities are going in this with a broad understanding of what they're signing up for."

Prairie Mountain Health has been assigned five international doctors a year, who work in the region for a minimum of four years after they complete a one-year training program at the University of Manitoba, Slate said. That program has expanded, so Slate hopes the region's allocation of doctors will also increase.

Prairie Mountain has 18 operating emergency departments — a lot compared to other regions, Slate said, but only six are open 24/7.