It's rage farming! I don't mind the tuition rebate/waiver for those that choose to practice family medicine.
In respect of medical schools and tuition, it would be my preference to:
a) re-regulate all graduate/professional tuitions in the province and set them as the same rate at the regulated under-graduate rate. (~$6,125) or so.
b) On top of the above number students are generally hit with a raft of ancillary costs that include fees for libraries, recreation, student unions, assorted capital project and other levies as well as mandatory transit passes and supplementary health insurance. I strongly favour the province increasing post-secondary grants for library and recreation services being included in existing tuition numbers. I would like to see universal health insurance for prescription drugs and dental, ultimately for everyone, but lets start with those 24 and under, and then, generally, supplementary coverage would not be necessary though university (for a domestic student).
c) For students from a low income background (we could pick w/e cut-off, but lets go with the bottom 2 income quintiles) tuition would be waived for the bottom group and discounted 50% for the second.
There are other ways I would prefer to address universal access to post-secondary education but I see the above as the most pragmatic scheme for the times.
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Getting doctors/nurses to practice in under-served areas seems to work best when:
a) They go to school an in an under-served area and have their residency in same. Now, we can't go offer medical school at every small, rural uni-campus.
But what we could do is beef up those offers at Lakehead/Laurentian in Thunder Bay and Sudbury respectively, funding more spots, more residence placements and ensuring a greater range of healthcare experiences on offer by extending more specialty equipment and services out side the GTA/Ottawa and London.
b) We know that having a basic suite of capabilities is key to attracting/retaining doctors in small/remote hospitals. One of biggest indicators is availability of a CT scanner as this is a critical device in assessing stroke, and how to treat it, and small town hospitals tends to be 'emergency intervention', 'simple injuries/prescriptions', low-risk births and some rehab/ and palliative care.
If you don't have the technical capability to do your job, you're more likely to avoid working at hospital 'x'.
c) We know that in family medicine, group practices that generally shift away from the fee-for-service model work much better in such settings. A key driver is that remote/rural doctors often feel unable to ever take a vacation as they require another doctor to cover them, or they may leave their community with no doctor. Additionally, in the traditional fee-for-service model, there is no vacation pay as such. Group practices allow for scheduled vacations, for coverage when you need time off as a doctor, for not being on call 24/7, and some stability in pay.
I'd rather look at the above as opposed to rebates or one-time payoffs.
However, there needs to be a large overhaul of how physicians are compensated. So much time, energy, and expense goes to paperwork and administration.
See above for most of my commentary, but I would say, in an urban-setting I think there's a bit more room for blending fee-for-service in, in part, in order to incent doctors to take on difficult/complex patients or to carry out procedures that may be unpleasant to perform or to push on a patient, but medically necessary.