Georgian Bluffs has been asked for financial assistance from South Bruce Peninsula’s doctor recruitment and retention committee.
Nine members of the committee visited Georgian Bluffs council Wednesday night and asked for 20 thousand dollars.
Paul Shirley — the committee’s co-chair — told council the money would be used on an as-needed basis for recruitment efforts.
Council will consider the request as part of its budget deliberations early in 2010.
Shirley and his fellow co-chair — South Bruce Peninsula Councillor Dan Kerr — say the committee’s aim is to promote the area’s way of life to prospective doctors.
But they need money to help doctors out with things like office rent, housing and equipment purchases.
South Bruce Peninsula is a medically underserviced area.
There are 5 physicians covering a catchment area of about 11,300 people, including Georgian Bluffs and Cape Croker.
Less than seven thousand people in the catchment area have a doctor, and those doctors are managing practices with an average of 14 hundred patients while also working full-time in the emergency department at the Wiarton hospital.
Although Doctor Nelvia Van Dorp has opened a practice in the area, three more doctors are needed to help ease the pressure.
As well, many of the current doctors are aging, meaning the need for new physicians will not go away any time soon.
One of those aging doctors is the new arrival’s father — Doctor John Van Dorp — who is also the chief of staff at the Wiarton hospital.
Kerr says the committee hopes his daughter’s commitment to the area may help lure some of her former classmates here as well.
Georgian Bluffs CAO Bill White says township council may seek representation on the doctor recruitment and retention committee as a condition of granting financial assistance.