by Ian Elliot
Northern News Services

NNSL (Oct 31/97) - Medical officials are writing a prescription they hope will alleviate a shortage of family doctors in Yellowknife.

The plan, scheduled to be in place next year, should start bringing new doctors to the city in 1998 by offering financial and other incentives for physicians to move here, says Dr. David Butcher, president of the local medical association.

"There is a crisis in physician manpower," Butcher said this week.

Several area doctors have moved their practices to other provinces or retired, he noted, and the core of the current shortage is that new people have not come North to replace them.

The new recruitment plan will address an inequity which exists between how general practitioners and specialists are recruited.

While specialists, as employees of the hospital, are eligible for incentives to come North, family doctors are essentially private contractors who work on a fee-for-service basis and sell their services to the hospital.

Because they are not considered hospital staff, they miss out on incentives to come North, such as subsidized moving expenses, unless they are offered by the clinics in which they are based.

Butcher says the plan now being drafted would allow the Stanton health board to offer such incentives to doctors.

Other provinces, including Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan, have such programs to persuade physicians to practice in rural or isolated areas, he noted, and the NWT has to compete against them.

"What we want to do is take a co-ordinated approach to make the NWT a recognizable and attractive destination for physicians," he said.

"We can sell the practice. We just have to get them here."