Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen says the province is making changes to its incentives to recruit and retain doctors in rural Manitoba. It will drop a grant program that gave medical students $12,000 in each of their four years of medical school if they'd promise to practice at least six months in an under-served area of the province after graduation. Goertzen says the government has done surveys that showed money was not the determining factor in whether a doctor would go to a rural community and stay there.

"Money was never the motivating factor. It almost always was how welcome they felt in the community, the services that are provided in the community, the kind of practice they had, the ability to work with other specialists and the ability to use their skills and their training to the full scope of practice. Those were the motivating factors."

Goertzen adds the government is working on a new strategy that focuses on the issues which are important to doctors.

"We are going to be putting together a more central provincial strategy in terms of how do we attract and retain doctors for the reasons that they actually decide to stay in communities and in the province."

He says it will be rolled out within the current budget year but gave no further specifics.

The government will save $4.2 million per year by cutting the subsidies to medical students.