The council for the Municipality of Killarney-Turtle Mountain is taking steps to try and bring more doctors to work in the community.

Council has approved spending $245,000 for Waterford Global to find doctors. As a retained search & recruitment firm, Waterford Global, located in Winnipeg, specializes in recruiting mid-to-senior professional and executive level talent domestically and internationally. They have satellite offices around the world allowing them to deliver service to more than 60 countries in North America, Europe, and Asia.

Killarney-Turtle Mountain Mayor Janice Smith says this isn’t their first time dealing with the recruitment firm. “We used them in 2016 and they were successful in bringing two doctors to work in our hospital.”

“Waterford Global will be in the UK mid to late May. They have up to 10 interviews planned with medical students and some doctors already practicing medicine. I’m very optimistic they’ll be successful again this time around.”

Smith adds Killarney has two full time doctors and other doctors have been working at the Tri Lake Health Centre.

“We’d like to have five full time doctors to meet the needs of our community.”

The municipality has approved the expenditure but if the firm is successful in bringing doctors to town they’ll get some of that money back. “So, we’ve got a similar deal with Prairie Mountain Health to the one we had in 2016 and we’d get about half of our money back if we find doctors to work here,” said Smith.

Janice Smith says it’ll be 2024 before any of the recruited doctors are working in Killarney-Turtle Mountain.