Alberta announces new funding to attract doctors, paramedics to rural and remote locations

The province is giving medical students signing bonuses to woo them to work in rural Alberta.

Under the plan announced Thursday, the Alberta government is spending $16 million over two years on its rural and remote family medicine resident bursary pilot program.

Starting this year, medical students and family medicine residents are eligible for the bursaries, which range from $125,000 to $200,000, in return for working in rural communities for three years after graduation.

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"This three year plan will guide governments efforts in improving rural and remote health care and close the gap between Albertans care in urban centres and surrounding areas," Adriana LaGrange, the province's health minister, said Thursday.

The bursary will provide up to $8 million annually for the next two years.

The bursaries will be available to medical students in their final year of an undergraduate medical program at any medical university who have been matched with a family medicine residency program at the University of Alberta or the University of Calgary.

Applications for the bursaries will be accepted starting in December.

The province also announced Thursday it will spend $1.4 million to recruit and train more medical first-responders for rural, remote and First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities across Alberta.

The injection of funding was welcomed by the likes of the Rural Municipalities of Alberta, but Kara Westerlund, vice-president for the RMA, said with 14 temporary service disruptions and emergency room closures across rural Alberta, she insists more workers are needed to fill empty hospitals -- workers for which the rest of Canada is competing.

"You've got rural hospitals dotted all over this province, but a complete under-utilization of those facilities," Westerlund told CTV News Edmonton on Thursday.

Dr. Parker Vandermeer, a rural emergency room doctor, said he would like to see more investments in supports for emergency medical services such as those provided by paramedics.

"What this government is actually doing is throwing pennies at a problem that should get thousands of dollars," Vandermeer told CTV News Edmonton, adding he would also like to see the province attract more emergency room doctors, something he says might not happen with bursaries.

The province says the rural health care action plan will be reviewed and updated every three years.

With files from CTV News Edmonton's Chelan Skulski and Karyn Mulcahy