City of Brantford Council received the Community Physician Recruitment Program 2024 and 2025 Action Plan during its Committee of the Whole, Planning and Administration meeting on Tuesday, November 12, 2024.
At the recommendation of the Community Health Care Task Force, the Physician Recruitment Committee, which was first created in 2001 after the catchment area known as “Brant,” which includes Brantford, County of Brant and Six Nations of the Grand River, was designated as an “underserviced area” by the provincial government.
Since 2002, the City of Brantford has supported Community Physician Recruitment with an annual financial allocation and each year, an agreement is executed between the parties outlining the amount of funding and its intended purpose.
The Physician Recruitment Committee has received an annual allocation of $110,000 from the Community Groups component of the Casino funds since 2010, though in February 2024, the allocation amount received a one-time increase from $110,000 to $145,000.
According to the report submitted by Aaron Wallace, the City’s Director of Strategic Initiatives, the program has recruited 16 physicians, with seven entering into a family medical practice, since the start of 2024.
While the committee is intending to disband following the 2025 program year, it is looking to recruit ten or more new physicians, five being family physicians and two for family practice, throughout next year, and asked Council to once again increase its allocation from $110,000 to $145,000 for 2025.
Sandra Vos, the Family Physician Task Force Chair, said that while they were grateful for this year’s budget increase, which helped provide more funds for recruitment activities and small incentives for any potential candidates, family physicians are not choosing Brantford to practice family medicine.
“The environment has drastically changed over the years since the task force has been involved as to what medical graduates are choosing as post-graduate specialties,” said Vos. “There are many reasons why they are hesitant to settle on permanent locations to practice as a family physician in the community. Our task force recognizes that we cannot compete with other regions that are offering tens of thousands of dollars in cash and other incentives.”
She said the task force recognizes that they need to modernize how things are done and learn how to adapt and adopt practices that are of benefit to a growing community.
Dr. Elliot Scott, a general practitioner in Brantford and chair of the Brantford Brant Norfolk Primary Care Council, said that upon graduation, a majority of family doctors and primary care providers (including nurse practitioners) are interested in being involved in Family Health Teams (FHT) rather than being a solo practitioner.
“We have one [FHT] in Paris and we have one in Simcoe, and what they provide is interprofessional care, and that’s how family doctors are trained these days,” said Dr. Elliot. “If we look at the undertaking of a clinic that could provide a health team environment with interprofessional care, and if we could fold into that the academic quotient, we would have close to an 80% retention rate because that’s what the numbers show us. …That gives us an opportunity and I think we really need to look at that as a recruiting mechanism.”
Speaking to the item at hand, Councillor Rose Sicoli thanked the task force for its hard work and dedication over the years, and asked Wallace if the increase to the budget was something City could do soon, or something that would need to wait until budget deliberations.
“The committee can certainly provide that direction now,” responded Wallace. “We did note in the report that an additional $35,000 is available within the community reserves fund, so that direction could come to us now and we’ll incorporate that into the deliberations that are forthcoming, or that could happen at estimates committee whenever this committee decides.”
Noting that the report states that the community as it stands will need another 14 to 16 physicians over the next 12 months, Sicoli moved an amendment to the recommendation to officially bump the 2025 budget from $110,000 to $145,000.
“These numbers are scary and even though the Physician Recruitment task force will be disbanding, I don’t think we should be taking our foot off the gas,” said Sicoli. “I think we should be moving forward aggressively in physician recruitment, especially with family physicians, so I would like to see them moving forward with their coffers loaded up while they’re doing this, while we look at what the plan for the future is.”
The amendment was then carried on a vote of 9-0, noting that Councillors Greg Martin and John Sless were not present for the vote.
The motion to receive Wallace’s report, as amended, was then carried on a vote of 9-0 with the final vote coming to Council on Tuesday, November 26.
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
