P.E.I. spending nearly 3 times more on health recruitment than it did 5 years ago

P.E.I.'s spending on recruitment of health professionals has almost tripled over the last five years — even as thousands of Islanders remain without a family doctor.

That was one of the pieces of information to emerge when officials with the Department of Health and Wellness responded to MLAs' questions about health-care recruitment as the standing committee on public accounts met Tuesday.

Presenters told MLAs the Island has considerably ramped up efforts to hire health-care professionals since 2018, expanding recruitment priorities beyond just a handful of specialties like family medicine, registered nurses and social workers.

Now they are also seeking associate physicians, physician assistants, licensed practical nurses and nurse practitioners.

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The department said when it comes to physicians, all areas are considered a top priority. But the highest need is for family, emergency and internal doctors as well as anesthesiologists and psychiatrists.

"The needs are shifting and they're growing," said Rebecca Gill, acting director of workforce planning, recruitment and pharmaceutical services with the department.

"[That's] based on what we're seeing right now in terms of our health system expansion... our national labour supply shortages, and just the ongoing need with people retiring, just the ongoing attrition that we're seeing right now in the health-care system."

The department said it has recruited 100 doctors in the last four years, with 42 departures during that same period.

Meanwhile, recruiting spending has grown from almost $1.6 million in the 2018-19 fiscal year to a budgeted $4.7 million for 2023-24. Most of the increase is due to the payment of incentives, including new ones for nurses and psychologists.

"On top of that, we're also being asked to support international recruitment in ways that we never had before," Gill said, adding that the department aims to recruit 200 internationally educated nurses in the next 12 months.

Money for recruitment missions within Canada and in places like Dubai has increased significantly over the last two years, officials said.

Liberal MLA and committee chair Gord McNeilly asked how many of the 27 professionals the province said were recruited after its recent mission to Dubai are practising in P.E.I. now.

Gill said none are doing so yet, adding that the federal immigration process can take upwards of nine months. The offers were made in March.

She said she was "very happy to say that a number of them are very close to completion of that process. But we anticipate the earliest will be January of 2024."

'As authentic and genuine as possible'

Officials said the key selling points they're using for recruitment include:

• new ways to deliver care on P.E.I., such as the province's development of medical homes where a variety of health-care professionals work closely together; 
• the development of the University of Prince Edward Island medical school; and
• work to make the licensing process more efficient.

Gill said recruiters are not shying away from the problems facing the health-care system here.

"The goal is to be as authentic and genuine as possible in the messages we're sharing, because while we may be the first point of contact… we are certainly not the most important contact that they're going to make," she said.

"It's about demonstrating that Prince Edward Island is trying to do something different that's evidence-informed, that is going to better position us as a system in its entirety."

The number of people in the department's recruitment team has increased, from five members in early 2018 to 10 as of last month.

Green MLA Peter Bevan-Baker asked whether there have been efforts to make the system more efficient.

Gill said officials have to balance speed with maintaining the quality of the recruitment process.

She mentioned efforts are underway on areas such as creating a centralized application pool so that nurses don't have to wait weeks after a job posting closes to hear whether they have passed the screening process.

Replacing outgoing physicians not '1-for-1'

Bevan-Baker also asked why, if the province is hiring more physicians and nurse practitioners, the number of Islanders on the patient registry continues to rise.

As of Sept. 4, there were 33,409 Islanders on the registry.

"When we have a physician perhaps who's nearing retirement, the size of their practice when they're retiring is sometimes three times that the size of a practice of a new physician coming in," Gill said.

"It is challenging in the recruitment field because I think there's there has been an assumption that it's a one-for-one.... We don't want to burn them out early in their careers. And so it's about connecting them into the system to ensure that those proper supports and conversations are happening so that they feel comfortable with what it is they're taking on."