This program is successful in providing physicians for the 25 designated communities. In a consistent blindness to shades of rural and remote, the designated communities next to the Sudbury airport were salaried at the same level as the most remote who would be a 3 hour drive to the next community with a doctor. This contract has been replaced by the Northern Group Funding Plan. After hours work being in these areas is paid additionally at fee for service rates. Scott ER rates are also in addition.
Physicians are responsible for their own overhead.
Funding for expansion beyond the 10 or so communities that signed on by December 1999 has been cancelled. While this may have been initially thought of as a solution for all of Ontario by the programs proponents, there has been a serious lack of rural input into design. A rural hospital test site will not be developed prior to what appears to be the general unrolling of primary care reform late in 2001. People already practising in the North are not eligible. Prospective rural physicians get the expenses of one site visit paid.