A federal incentive dating back 12 years has brought less than 18,000 doctors and nurses to rural Canada because medical students are largely unaware of the debt forgiveness program, according to a recently released report.
Authors of the report found that a general lack of awareness about the loan forgiveness program impacted application numbers.
“Intended beneficiaries learn about the benefits from different sources with word of mouth being the most common source of information,” said the report, first obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter.
In fact, half of the doctors and nurses who signed up for the program “found out about the benefit from family or friends.”
The report also found that the greatest number of applications from doctors and nurses occurred from 2012 to 2015, during the “early years of the benefit.”
The report’s authors recommended a new focus be placed on getting the word out to medical students and professionals.
Loan Forgiveness
The goal of the program is to provide partial student loan forgiveness to eligible health care professionals, such as family doctors, nurses, and nurse practitioners, who agree to practise in an under-served rural or remote community for up to five years.Ottawa amended the Canada Student Loans Act in 2012 to forgive up to $40,000 in loans to doctors and $20,000 for nurses. The government raised loan forgiveness to $60,000 for doctors and $30,000 for nurses last year.
Nurses and nurse practitioners would be eligible for up to $4,000 in loan forgiveness during the first year, $5,000 for the second year, $6,000 for the third, $7,000 for the fourth, and $8,000 for the fifth year.
Without the benefit, 38 percent of doctors and 42 percent of nurses said they would be “unlikely to move to a designated community,” the report said, adding that approximately 600 communities attracted a new doctor or nurse under the program.
Program Retention
A 2020 survey of program beneficiaries revealed that 69 percent of those who were no longer on the benefit chose to stay in a designated community after their eligibility expired.More than half of all beneficiaries—54 percent—continued to work in the same designated community where they first qualified for loan forgiveness. The remaining 15 percent worked in a different rural community.
Doctors working between 250 and 499 kilometres from a central metropolitan area were twice as likely to spend an additional year on the benefit than those living less than 50 kilometres away, the report said. Those working between 500 and 999 kilometres were more than three times as likely.
The report also found that having a spouse or dependents increased the time spent taking advantage of the program unless the spouse was also contributing to household income.
