Alberta attracted more health-care workers between 1996 and 2001 than any other province or territory, finds a report from the Canadian Institute for Health Information.
Alberta become even more popular than British Columbia during the five-year time period -- the first time in 10 years that B.C. has been bumped from the top spot as the destination of choice for health-care workers.
Ontario and Prince Edward Island were the only other two provinces that attracted more health-care workers than they lost during that time, the report found.
Newfoundland and Labrador, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan reported the greatest net losses of health care providers through interprovincial migration.
CIHI's Distribution and Internal Migration of Canada's Health Care Workforce report is the first of its kind to use Canadian census data to look at migration patterns of health-care workers, including a number of individual health occupations, such as dentists, pharmacists, physiotherapists, physicians and registered nurses.
"Improving what we know about where these workers are, and how they are moving, is crucial to developing the recruitment and retention strategies required to maintain a strong health care workforce into the future," explained Francine Anne Roy, CIHI's Director of Health Resources Information.
Between 1996 to 2001, health-care providers were generally more mobile than the Canadian workforce at large, though the majority of that migration occurred between communities within the same province, rather than between the provinces.
Occupational therapists, respiratory therapists and audiologists/speech language pathologists were the most likely to move from one place to another. Dentists, licensed practical nurses and medical laboratory technicians were the least likely to relocate.
Using the Scott's Medical Database, the researchers also looked at migration patterns among doctors. They found that, on average each year, 1.4 per cent of Canada's physicians move from one province or territory to another, while another five per cent move from one community to another within the same province.
Doctors from rural areas were the most likely to move around -- and when they relocated, they often moved to cities. Every year, rural areas of the country lose, on average, 1.3 per cent of their physicians to urban areas of the country, the report found.
"Just like the average Canadian, health-care workers migrate for different reasons, some personal and some professional," said Dr. Roger Pitblado, author of the CIHI reports. "It is important to track these movements, but it is also important to understand how these migration patterns relate to what is going on in neighbouring communities, and in the rest of the country as a whole."
In 2001, there were just under 750,000 people classified as health-care workers in Canada. This represents a growth of eight per cent in the decade between 1991 and 2001. During that same period, the general population grew by 10 per cent. The ratio of health-care workers per 100,000 people in Canada decreased by two per cent between 1991 and 2001.
