"There's no simple answer to this.  There needs to be an array of different solutions," she said.

Boyd said a recent deal to spend $36 million to help underserviced areas of Ontario fell apart because of a dispute between doctors and the Health Ministry.

Some Southwestern Ontario MPP's added their own horror stories yesterday in the wake of a report finding the region's supply of doctors below Ontario's average.

In a rare show of non-partisan agreement, the provincial politicians said the shortage of doctors is serious--but with no easy fix.

The report sent to area provincial politicians by Dr. James Rourke showed the board Southwest needs more than 300 doctors--just to bring it to the provincial average.

Rourke, director of the Southwestern Ontario Rural Medicine unit at the University of Western Ontario, plans to meet with MPPs this week to seek solutions.

No area MPPs contacted yesterday seemed surprised by Rourke's report.  Some backed it with their own stories or riding comments:

• Pat Hoy (L-Essex-Kent) said he knows of a doctor in his far-flung rural riding who is trying to juggle a caseload of 7,000 patients.
• Peter North (Ind.-Elgin) said he went without a family doctor for more than two years when his doctor moved to the United States.
• And Marcel Beaubian (PC-Lambton), whose rural county has the area's most critical doctor shortage, said "the idea of a doctor coming down to Southwestern Ontario and opening up their own practice doesn't fly anymore."

London Centre MPP Marion Boyd, the New Democrat health critic at Queen's Park, said she hopes this week's meeting with Rourke will spark some action.

"There's no simple answer to this.  There needs to be an array of different solutions," she said.

Boyd said a recent deal to spend $36 million to help underserviced areas of Ontario fell apart because of a dispute between doctors and the Health Ministry.

Rourke's report found the overall population-to-doctor ratio in the Southwest is 636, compared to a provincial average of 550.

For non-specialists, mainly family doctors, the report put the Southwest at one doctor for every 1,358 residents, compared to an Ontario average of one per 1,124.

Hoy said the issue have been a problem in rural areas for years. But if doctors get the right incentives, they can be sold on lifestyle benefits of rural life, he said.

"If we can get some doctors into the rural areas we can get a snowball effect."

Libearl Leader Dalton McGuinty recently promoted a plan for the province to cover medical tuition fees for doctors who, in turn, would agree to work in underserviced areas for at least five years.

MPP Helen Johns (PC-Huron) said she agrees with that strategy, because it seems to lifted from a private member's bill she filed six months ago.

"I'm pretty pleased (McGuinty) has co-opted my idea, but I notice he didn't give me recognition," said the Tory backbencher, who acknowledged that she hasn't been able to sell the concept to Health Minister Elizabeth Witmer.

Johns, who formerly had additional duty as an MPP assisting the health minister, said different areas of the province need different solutions to doctor shortages.