New Brunswick short 300 doctors

Date: Sept. 29, 1999
Time: 11:48 am

The province now has a ratio of 1:748, compared to the national average of 1:546. In the short term the NBMS is concentrating on filling 28 new positions: 13 funded vacancies and 15 new positions agreed to in the last provincial budget.

Physician remuneration is the major hurdle, since doctors paid by salary in New Brunswick earn 20-25% less than their counterparts in other Atlantic provinces. Fee-for-service physicians face global and individual caps on the amount they can bill the provincial medical insurance plan and are the second lowest-paid in the country, ahead of only Newfoundland.

The NBMS says this longstanding inequity has created higher patient volumes and problems with recruitment and retention among the province's 1146 physicians. To make matters worse, a provincial physician resource plan dictating where physicians can practice has medical residents convinced the province is essentially a closed shop for new doctors.

"That's not true and we have to get beyond that perception," said NBMS president Dr. Jeanne McNeill of Moncton, told eCMAJ Today. "If we don't get this problem solved soon, its going to be really bad."

To help ease physician workload, a new collaborative practice model, where provincially-funded RNs work in the physician's office, is now being piloted at 2 sites. "A lot of things could be done with a trained nurse," said McNeill. "We could see more patients, more efficiently with less burn-out." New Brunswick premier Bernard Lord announced yesterday he will create 300 new permanent nursing positions to provide greater access to health care.

The NBMS wants the new conservative government to get rid of caps and the physician resource plan, and address the fee schedule. The issues will be discussed at the NBMS annual meeting at the end of this week. The society should have a sympathetic ear in the government as the new health minister is Dr. Dennis Furlong, a former rural community physician and past president of the NBMS.

The society is also involved in a rural summer medical student program where about 10 first or second year medical students from Dalhousie or Sherbrooke work alongside a rural physician-preceptor for up to 10 weeks. The program, now in its second year, aims to encourage the students to practice in New Brunswick.

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