ADVICE: Medical care in Calgary area and Alberta in general (schools, universities)

[Mark S.]

Considering a permanent move to the greater Calgary area some time in the ensuing years, but one of the big Red Flags we have seen is the scarcity of medical care and how hard it is to find a good family doctor. One in four Albertans don't have a family doctor???

Is it really that bad?

Any tips on how to succeed in finding quality healthcare?

Are things getting better or worse?

[Zoisite]

If you aren't planning to make a move yet for another few years I think you'll find that a lot of things can change for the better over the course of those ensuing years while in the meantime more and more skilled immigrant professionals are moving here to fill voids.

The fact is ALL of Canada in general has a shortage of family doctors, it's not only Alberta. It has always been that way right across Canada. One of the reasons for that has been because when medical students in Canada graduate from Canadian medical schools there are always head hunters from other countries sitting in the wings waiting to try to entice the cream of the crop graduates with big promises and more money and they whisk them away out of Canada to their own countries. So Canada loses a lot of its home-grown highly skilled medical professionals to other countries, USA in particular, (which has been a bone of contention with me but apparently USD money speaks very loudly and is a big incentive for some people). However, new immigrant physicians to Canada can pick and choose where they want to live and work in Canada and take the place of some of the graduates that Canada has lost to other countries. There just isn't enough of them yet.

The vast majority of medical professionals living and working in Canada will be found in the surrounding vicinity of big cities and big universities where the majority of people are. But all physicians, regardless of where they live in each province (be it in big cities or on some circuit up north in the boonies) are accountable to their own province's College of Physicians and Surgeons. The Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons maintain lists and can be a good source for finding out the names and locations and types of practises of physicians who are accepting new patients. So if and when you decide to try to immigrate to Canada, whichever province you're looking at I'd suggest that the first place to make enquiries about medical practitioners in that province would be that province's College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Whenever I've been looking for a physician/specialist the College here has always been the first place I've looked. And I can tell you that for the past 50 years all of the family doctors or specialists that I've had here in BC have either been new immigrants from other countries or else the first generation children of recent immigrants and said children have gotten all their education and practical training in Canada.

I've never had any problems with any of them, even when I've sometimes had to rely on physicians who are strangers working out of walk-in clinics. They all do their best but none of them can be expected to be infallible. I believe that whether or not a physician can be considered "a good family doctor who provides quality health care" is relative to the type of patients that they accept into their practise and a lot of times acceptance of patients is based on the discernment, intelligence and real needs of the patients. It's never a good idea to have too high expectations and be too demanding of physicians who are already doing their best because they are human too, just like the rest of us, and they may hold our lives in their hands.

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[Mark S.]

Great info, Zoisite. Thanks very much!