‘It’s been very successful’: Kingston, Ont. spending millions to recruit doctors

A walk-in clinic and family medicine practice in Kingston, Ont. Oct. 15, 2025. (Dylan Dyson/CTV News Ottawa)

In the face of a doctor shortage crisis, the city of Kingston has invested millions of dollars to recruit dozens of new family physicians.

In 2022, there were an estimated 30,000 residents in Kingston without primary care.

That led the city to an incentive-based solution, where new doctors coming to Kingston would receive $100,000. Since starting this recruitment initiative, Kingston has spent approximately $3.5 million bringing in doctors.

“It’s been very successful over the last three years,” Kingston mayor Bryan Paterson told CTV News Ottawa.

“We’ve been able to attract 33 new family physicians. Typically, that’s $100,000 split over installments of five years, so that there is that commitment for service back to our community.”

Now in 2025, Paterson says the number of Kingston residents without primary care has been cut by two-thirds.

“We’re now less than 10,000, so we’ve come a long way. Obviously, there’s still a little bit more work to be done. But the trajectory that we’re on now is going to see that number get to or very close to zero.”

It hasn’t come without sacrifices, though; Paterson says the money for the incentives has come straight out of the municipal budget, meaning $3.5 million less for needs such as roads or parks.

“Pay the money, fix us,” remarked resident Greg Fowler, who is without a family doctor, and was stopping in at a weekly walk-in clinic in Kingston.

“Little things crop up where you need a prescription here and there, and not having a family doctor just means you have to jump through a lot more hoops to get where you need to be,” said Fowler.

Paterson notes that funding for health care should be provided by the provincial government, but in the wake of a doctor shortage crisis, the city could not look the other way.

But this solution was never meant to be a long-term strategy. Kingston’s mayor says now that urgent needs have been addressed, the approach needs to shift to keeping the doctors they’ve recruited.

“We’ve put an additional $400,000 aside for the coming years, and we’re doing that because we think that we’ve now hit a point where instead of attracting new doctors, we’re now looking just to stabilize where we’re at.”

The Ontario Medical Association (OMA) said incentives like Kingston’s can attract doctors, but warned they can also lead to inequitable situations.

“When municipalities compete with one another to recruit physicians, it can create winners and losers that deepen existing inequities in access to care. Ontario needs a coordinated, province-wide strategy to make sure every community has enough family doctors, not just those that can afford to pay the most,” the OMA said in a statement to CTV News Ottawa.

The city of Kingston says that it has about 32 doctors in the region that are aged 60 or older and could retire in the coming years, undoing its recruitment work.

Eight new doctors – part of the 33 total that have been brought to Kingston – were recruited this summer and fall, but four local doctors also retired during this time.

“The focus is going to shift from attracting new doctors to take on new patients and more just finding new recruits, new doctors that can take over from existing doctors who are retiring,” says Paterson.

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