Ontario’s doctor shortage — which has left roughly one in 10 people in the province without a family physician — is precarious because one in five doctors are over age 60 and 11 per cent have already reached the traditional retirement age of 65, said Dr. David Bach, the newly-elected president of the Ontario Medical Association

The best bets for easing Ontario’s doctor shortage include wooing some of the 9,000 physicians trained in Canada but now working in the United States, says the new president of the Ontario Medical Association.

While he acknowledged the provincial government has made ”significant progress” by increasing medical school enrollment aimed at increasing the supply of doctors, more needs to be done in the short term, said Dr. David Bach, who was elected over the weekend. ”It takes many years to increase our pool of new doctors,” noted Bach, a radiologist from London, Ont., the new head of the association representing the province’s more than 20,000 physicians. The association estimates Ontario needs another 2,300 doctors to serve its growing and aging population. Health Minister George Smitherman said last week that the government is stepping up efforts to recruit more doctors, including Internet sites aimed at helping foreign-trained doctors through the process of becoming accredited physicians here.

Well, here we go again ! It looks like every once in a while the Health Agency like to pretend they are going to do something about the Doctors shortage. How sad to see that many doctors are going to practice in the US. I guess that the private health sector is more attractive.

I really hope this time they will work something out for all those "foreign-trained" once to be able to practice here because if we have to wait for the ones that are currently studying, pfff, we can wait for another 7 ti 15 years depending on their specialty but the need is now !