REGINA – The Saskatchewan government says more than 500 new doctors have been added to the workforce since 2007. Health Minister Dustin Duncan says the Saskatchewan Party has kept its commitment to recruiting and retaining more physicians.
The government says the number of family physicians has increased by 23 per cent, and specialists are up by nearly 35 per cent.
Since it created the physician recruitment agency Saskdocs, the government says nearly 190 physicians have been recruited to practice in rural and remote communities.
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The number of family physicians has increased by 23 per cent.
The Saskatchewan government also says it has doubled the number of post-graduate physician training seats at the college of medicine to 120 and upped the number of undergraduate medical education seats to 100 from 60.
“It wasn’t too long ago when hundreds of physicians and health care-professionals were leaving the province,” Duncan said in a news release Tuesday.
“I’m happy to see things are different now.”
The Rural Family Physician Incentive Program provides recent graduates with up to $120,000 over five years if they set up practice in a community with fewer than 10,000 people.
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