In July of last year, the Manitoba Government announced a recruitment target of 150 Family Doctors in the Province through a contract they have with a recruitment agency with initial goals of 50 physicians each for Winnipeg, northern Manitoba, and rural communities.

In March 2024, the Rotary Club of Neepawa invited the Beautiful Plains Community Clinic to speak about the Physician Recruitment efforts in the community. Michelle Levandoski, Beautiful Plains Clinic Manager presented Neepawa and the area’s current needs and challenges with regards to Physician recruitment.

“As we all know, this is nothing new, Neepawa is currently experiencing a physician shortage due to the increasing population size and the fact that we have a departure of two physicians within the last couple of years. We are low on meeting our community’s primary care needs.  That being said this shortage is not unique to Neepawa at all. It is being experienced in towns, cities, provincially and at a national level. Everyone is struggling to recruit family physicians.” said Levandoski.

Levandoski also shared that despite the Manitoba Government’s recruitment strategy announcement last year, no doctors are coming to Manitoba and that the Provincial Government is currently reviewing the said contract with the recruitment agency.

With the growing population here in Neepawa and with the upcoming new hospital, more physicians are needed. Different recruitment strategies are being done by the local clinic including overseas recruitment/ staffing agencies and medical student exposures. Aside from the lack of doctors, one of the challenges is retaining our physicians in the community which is mostly due to the availability of housing and childcare facilities and other issues when it comes to settling in their new community.

Dr. Milligan,  Director of the Medical Residency program of the local clinic shared about how the program works and is hoping that the Medical Students will later on decide to stay in Neepawa and work as local physicians to address the current shortage of physicians.

Recently, an announcement was made by the Manitoba Government on April 2, 2024, led by Premier Wab Kinew and the Minister of Finance Adrien Sala about the new budget for 2024 and one of the budget priorities is rebuilding health care by hiring 100 doctors, 210 nurses, 90 paramedics and 600 health care aides over the next year, and investments to retain and train even more. With this announcement, Manitobans are hoping that these will translate to better results for our healthcare system.