Supply of doctors reach all-time high
Posted December 15, 2011 4:06 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The number of practising doctors in Canada is at an all-time high, with nearly 70,000 active physicians working in the country last year, shows a report released Thursday by the Canadian Institute for Health Information.
The numbers suggest the doctor shortage of a few years ago is being resolved and the country may even be heading towards a glut, if the supply of doctors isn’t better managed.
“We have the short-term glasses on right now. We need to maybe put the long-term glasses on,” said Arthur Sweetman, a health economist and a member of CHEPA — the Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis — at McMaster University in Hamilton.
“Are are we still going to need the really high numbers that we’re allowing into medical school now in eight or 10 years?” wondered Sweetman, who was not involved in the compiling of the CIHI report. “We need to be planning a decade ahead, because it takes a decade to train a physician.”
The report was actually one of two released by the health statistics agency on Thursday. The second related to what doctors are being paid.
Clinical payments to doctors reached nearly $19 billion in 2009-2010, according to the report. The average pay to doctors increased by about four per cent a year between 2005 and 2010.
In 2010 the average family doctor grossed $239,000 and the average specialist’s gross income was $341,000.
But those figures may not accurately reflect what the average doctor’s take-home pay is. On the one hand, they are gross incomes, which cover not just the doctor’s salary, but the cost of running his or her office as well — things like office expenses, staff salaries and other practice costs.
On the other hand, the figures show only what doctors earned in fee-for-service payments, and that isn’t the only form of income a doctor receives. The report said fee-for-service payments make up only about 75 per cent of total payments to doctors in Canada.
In terms of numbers, there were 203 physicians for every 100,000 Canadians in 2010, up 35 per cent from the rate in 1980. The number of doctors per 100,000 Canadians rose in all provinces and territories — except Yukon and Northwest Territories — over the past five years.
The report also showed that out-migration of doctors has dropped off, decreasing by 16 per cent between 2006 and 2010. In 2010, 202 doctors returned to Canada from other countries, while 173 left Canada to work elsewhere.
