Family doctors are 'drowning' as Fredericton struggles to recruit
CBC
In the second quarter of this year, Horizon Health Network hired 44 new physicians in the province's cities — but only one of them went to Fredericton.
Over the same time period, data from the regional health authority shows the capital region lost three family doctors.
Will Stymiest, a physician who also chairs the family practice section of the New Brunswick Medical Society, is not surprised by the net loss.
He said recruitment and retention has been a problem in the Fredericton area ever since he began his residency in family medicine 10 years ago.
"Over the last five years we've had a half dozen or more, maybe even close to a dozen, young, new, in-practice physicians who started a community family practice and have left," he said of the doctors he has seen pass through.
"And there's numerous reasons for that, but a lot of it comes back to feelings of lack of support. Feelings that their time is more valued elsewhere, in other parts of the health-care system and sometimes in other provinces."
Stymiest said the remaining family doctors in the region are struggling to keep up.
"We are, as a group, drowning because of lack of support," he said.
"That's why people aren't choosing family practice, that's why people aren't staying in family practice."
Measures introduced by New Brunswick's Department of Health, such as N.B. Health Link, which connects patients without a doctor or nurse practitioner to primary care at local clinics, are also failing to meet the demand.
As of June 30, according to the department, there are 61,173 New Brunswickers able to access appointments through that portal. Only 7,700 of those are Fredericton-area residents.
The province also has 35,600 patients on a waiting list to access N.B. Health Link. Of that group, 60 per cent live in the Fredericton region.
Stymiest says the government programs are well intentioned, but ultimately the health-care system won't work unless more doctors are hired.
The Department of Health deferred questions about N.B. Health Link to Extramural New Brunswick, where spokesperson Christianna Williston said the program is designed "to maximize existing resources within the system."
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