Eleven new physicians have engaged with the City of Peterborough’s physician recruitment pilot project, with six having agreements or commitments to receive financial incentives.
The city’s economic development director Darryl Julott, along with the city’s physician recruitment coordinator Chantal Van Parys, presented an update on the pilot project to council meeting as general committee on Monday night (May 12).
In April 2024, council gave city staff direction for a new approach to physician recruitment in the City of Peterborough, which resulted in establishing a pilot project until the end of December 2025 with a budget of $580,000. The city hired a physician recruitment coordinator last fall, with responsibility for the pilot project moved under the city’s new economic development department.
In a presentation to council, Julott noted the focus of the physician recruitment pilot project is both on recruiting and retaining family doctors, to reduce the number of unattached patients and to prevent patients from becoming unattached when existing physicians retire.
Julott said that, since April 2024, over 6,000 unattached patients have been seen by the Peterborough Family Health Team (PFHT) unattached patient clinic, which includes three new part-time physicians. The clinic, which received $6,000 from the pilot program for eye and ear examination equipment and security equipment, has saved an estimated $370,804 by diverting these patients from the emergency department at Peterborough Regional Health Centre (PRHC).
In addition, six new Family Health Organization physicians have been added, preventing 8,000 patients from going on the unattached list. Three new physicians have also been added to the Community Health Centre in Peterborough Square, with one of those to join the centre in August, with a goal of rostering 6,500 new patients.
Julott also said a new family physician operating at Northcrest Pharmasave Pharmacy’s medical clinic has rostered 2,200 patients.
The pilot project’s financial incentive program, which offered $15,000 over three years to eligible new family physicians, focused on helping doctors with start-up costs when establishing a new practice in Peterborough. Julott said all the incentive funds available in the pilot project have been expended.
The pilot project also features a “Whole of Village” incentive program to encourage family doctors to locate in Peterborough by providing additional supports such as working with community partners to address spousal employment and child care needs.
That program offered three additional financial incentives: a patient roster bonus to encourage physicians to receive as many patients as possible, an ambassador bonus to encourage physicians to recruit other physicians, and a “hometown proud” bonus to encourage healthcare professionals to stay in Peterborough. Julott said all these incentive funds have also been expended.
According to an email from physician recruitment coordinator Chantal Van Parys that kawarthaNOW received following Monday night’s meeting, six of the new physicians mentioned in the presentation have agreements or commitments of financial incentives within the pilot project.
They do not include the three new physicians at the Community Health Centre, which are salaried positions that do not qualify for incentives. One physician who came out of retirement to go back to practice also doesn’t qualify for incentives, and an additional physician who joined her family member’s practice didn’t engage with the pilot project for incentives.
“This is not a net number (of new physicians in Peterborough and Peterborough County), but ones that relate to the pilot, the city funding under the pilot, or who have engaged with me as recruitment coordinator,” Van Parys noted.
In addition to incentives, the pilot project’s other activities included working with the Peterborough Family Doctors’ Think Tank on recommendations for physician recruitment and retention, and joining the Eastern Ontario Physicians Recruitment Alliance (EOPRA) to obtain access to software for job postings and candidate tracking.
Representing Peterborough, Van Parys will be joining other physician recruiters from across Ontario at a job fair hosted by the Ontario Physicians Recruitment Alliance in Birmingham, U.K. on May 31, with the intention of attracting general practitioners in the U.K. who want to relocate to Ontario.
Julott said that, in response to the Ontario government’s new $1.8 billion primary care action plan to connect two million more people to a publicly funded family doctor or primary care team within four years, the Peterborough Ontario Health Team has submitted three proposals for provincial funding, which is being allocated based on postal codes with the highest number of unattached patients.
VON’s Keene Health Centre and the Trent Hills Family Health Team have submitted a proposal for four additional nurse practitioners, 3.5 independent health care practitioners, and five additional staff with a target of 3,500 net new attached patients by March 2027.
The Peterborough 360 Degree Nurse Practitioner Led Clinic has submitted a proposal for additional staffing to serve the marginalized population, including a patient system navigator, with a target of 800 net new attached patients by March 2027.
The Peterborough Family Health Team has submitted a “high budget” proposal to maintain its current operations with around 31 additional staff, with a target of serving 8,300 net new attached patients by March 2027.
For the remaining eight months of the pilot project, Julott said work will focus on supporting physician recruitment outside of financial incentives, including “warm welcome” approach and resources for prospective physicians, continuing to work with the Ontario Health Team and County of Peterborough on primary care strategy and report for the region, using social media for advocacy instead of recruitment, and continuing planning work to increase childcare capacity.
With the pilot project ending in December, Julott also said they are looking ahead to the next 10 years, recommending that healthcare recruitment continue to be incorporated in the city’s economic development strategy, including having a physician recruitment coordinator continue as a single point of contact.
Long-term plans would focus less on individual financial incentives and more on expanding infrastructure and environment to attract for new physicians, nurse practitioners, and other health professionals to the community, and to explore opportunities with Trent University, Fleming College, and Queen’s University’s Primary Care Teaching Clinic.
In response to a question from councillor Don Vassiliadis about the impact of the financial incentives, Van Parys said “Lots of communities are offering (financial) incentives, so we’re never going to be the highest, but they definitely helped.”
However, she noted that physicians also look at other factors when deciding to relocate, including whether they can practice their full scope of practice in the community, which may include hospital work.
In response to a question from Vassiliadis about recruiting internationally trained physicians, Van Parys said they have been focusing on Canadian physicians living in the U.S. who want to return to Canada and international physicians living in the U.K., Ireland, and Australia, which are countries whose physicians don’t have to obtain additional credentials to practise in Canada.
Van Parys also said the Peterborough will be pursuing the potential of applying for some of the $300 million in funding from the Ontario government to build up to 17 new and expanded community-based primary care teaching clinics in communities with high rates of unattachment to primary care.
“Peterborough’s really well set up to get that started, because (the province) want to focus on interdisciplinary care — nurse practitioners and pharmacists and dietitians — as part of the care team that then refers up to the family physician who will be the specialist.”
“They want to put the expertise of the family physician at the head of those teams, with all of the people (in the team) practising up to their scope of their practice, and Peterborough is really well-suited to have a teaching clinic that covers all those professions.”
Councillor Keith Riel compared Peterborough’s physician recruitment efforts with the City of Belleville’s, which has recruited 15 new physicians in the past two years.
Julott noted that Belleville has higher financial incentives, and Van Parys added that those numbers are not always net new physicians, but also include the replacement of retiring physicians.
PDF: Physician Recruitment Update – May 12, 2025
Physician Recruitment Update - May 12, 2025
Speaking to financial incentives, Mayor Jeff Leal suggested “We may want to bust the myth about these incentives,” noting that a lot of communities that provide five-year incentives to physicians see those physicians depart the community after five years.
“The physician will sign an agreement saying they promise to practise for the length of the contract, usually three to five years,” Van Parys said in response to the mayor’s comment. “In the case of Belleville, they’ve used the return of service agreements frequently, but then they have a large number of physicians leave at the same time.”
“We really want to try to get physicians are here for the long term, because it’s almost harder to have someone come short term and then leave,” she added, giving the example of a local physician who had rostered 2,000 patients and then left for another community that offered a larger financial incentive.
Mayor Leal noted there is a group of Ontario mayors pressing the province to get rid of financial incentives because they believe they are inconsistent with the anti-bonusing provisions of the Municipal Act.
Councillor Gary Baldwin asked Van Parys about the large number of patients being served by the physician at Northcrest Pharmasave Pharmacy’s medical clinic. She said that he is working on a fee-for-service basis, rather than being paid for the number of rostered patients in the family health team model, which means he can see a higher number of patients.
In the family health team model, she explained, part-time physicians would roster 650 to 1,200 patients, with full-time physicians in practice for five years rostering around 1,800 patients. Some veteran family physicians whose practice has grown over the years can roster 2,000 to 2,200 patients, she added.
After the presentation, councillor Alex Bierk moved an amendment to the report of the presentation that would direct city staff to investigate the current trend of U.S. physicians relocating to Canada because of the political climate under the Trump administration, assess the feasibility of developing a local strategy to attract U.S. trained physicians to Peterborough, and to report back to council with findings and recommendations for potential actions.
Although some councillors questioned the necessity of including the amendment and whether this should be be a federal or provincial initiative, councillors voted 7-4 to support the amendment, with Crowley, Vassiliadis, Duguay, and Baldwin voting against it. Council then voted unanimously to accept the update report with Bierk’s amendment.
