Hospital Ramping Up Efforts For Physicians

The Dryden Regional Health Centre is no longer sitting on the sideline and is lobbying the province to make it easier for physicians to work in the north.
The Government currently allocates only 25-doctors a month for all Ontario Family Health Teams.
Hospital CEO Wade Petranik says they need these physicians.
Petranik is urging the province and Ontario Medical Association to speed up the process of accepting applications.
He says they have a physician in town who is eagerly awaiting approval to work full-time with the Family Health Team and the Hospital but notes his application is currently up in the air.
Petranik says the province is currently making recruitment efforts next to impossible.
He says the hospital and the emergency room relies heavily on full-time physicians and stresses they are currently facing a shortage of physicians.
Petranik says the province is instead shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to fly locums in from Southern Ontario to cover area hospitals.