World’s Doctors Choosing Ontario
McGuinty Government Ensuring Families Have Access To Quality Health Care
Today more doctors from around the world are choosing to practise in Ontario, ensuring that families have access to the high quality health care they need, closer to home.
A record number of international medical graduates (IMGs) are now working in Ontario. The HealthForce Ontario Marketing and Recruitment Agency has been helping to boost Ontario’s efforts in recruiting doctors – both foreign trained and those trained in other provinces or the U.S. – over the past several years. A majority of these doctors are either treating patients in high-demand specialties, such as internal medicine, psychiatry and emergency medicine, or practising as family doctors.
Now IMGs make up almost 25 per cent of the doctors who are serving Ontario families. This achievement is in stark contrast to when Ontario was losing more doctors than it was recruiting, prior to 2003.
These initiatives, in part, are the reason why 94 per cent of Ontarians now have a family doctor. Having access to a family doctor helps keep pressure off hospital emergency rooms, can improve health outcomes and most importantly, delivers peace of mind to Ontario families.
Today’s announcement is part of the government’s Open Ontario Plan to provide more access to health care services while improving quality and accountability for patients.
QUICK FACTS
- In 2009, Ontario gained 174 doctors from another province or country, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information.
- Ontario offers 200 training and assessment positions annually for IMGs – more than all other provinces combined.
- There are currently more than 6,050 IMGs in Ontario, representing almost a quarter of the physician workforce.
- HealthForceOntario Marketing and Recruitment Agency helps to recruit qualified health care professionals into Ontario and assist internationally educated health professionals living in Ontario to become qualified to practise in the province.
