Doctors stretched thin in rural areas: study

Last Updated Wed, 11 Jan 2006 12:08:27 EST CBC News

A new study confirms what small-town and rural Canadians already knew: People outside cities are served by fewer doctors – and a lot fewer specialists – and their doctors tend to do a wider range of medical work.

• INDEPTH: Health Care

About 21 per cent of the population live in rural areas, with populations of 10,000 or less, and about nine per cent of doctors work there, says the study published on Wednesday by the Canadian Institute for Health Information in Ottawa. The gap is narrower for family doctors, researchers at Laurentian University found.
About 16 per cent of family physicians and/or general practitioners work in rural areas but only 2.4 per cent of specialists – including pediatricians, obstetricians and general surgeons – practise in rural areas.
Not surprisingly, rural family doctors do more varied work, the study found.
In the least populated areas, about 33 per cent deliver babies and 74 per cent provide emergency-room care. That compares to nine per cent and 15 per cent, respectively, in the big cities.
"If rural family doctors didn't provide some specialty services, many people would be forced to travel even greater distances to get medical care – or they would simply go without," co-author Roger Pitblado said in a statement.
The study, based on 2004 data, was done by Pitblado, a geography professor, and Raymond Pong, research chief of the university's Centre for Rural and Northern Health Research.
It found little change in the rural-urban doctor split since 1996. In that year (when Canada was slightly less urban), rural areas had 22 per cent of the population and 10 per cent of the doctors.
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