A community-driven effort in Prince Rupert, B.C., is bringing more doctors to the North Coast city, with nine physicians welcomed or preparing to arrive as of March 31, 2026. The Prince Rupert Healthcare Recruitment Task Force, formed in 2023 after several doctors said they were leaving, includes the mayor, city councillors, Northern Health, and local partners working together to make the community a place physicians want to call home.
The new arrivals include two general surgeons, a urologist, a psychiatrist, an OB/GYN, two emergency physicians, and two family physicians. This boost comes after a serious shortage that forced the emergency department at Prince Rupert Regional Hospital to close overnight at least eight times in March 2024. By September 2026, the hospital will have 7.6 full-time equivalent emergency physicians, nearly double the 4.0 it had in 2025. For the first time in three years, spring break in 2026 went by with no emergency department closures from staffing gaps.
Jacquelyn Marko, Northern Health’s permanent medical staff recruiter for the northwest since 2021, is the central link for the task force. She and others point to practical steps that make a difference: welcome dinners, community tours, help finding housing, and connections to schools for doctors’ families. Housing has been a major hurdle, so community advocate Sharon Stromdahl taps her network to find places that never hit the open market. The city even switched its emergency department payment model from fee-for-service to hourly contracts, which created full-time positions that didn’t exist before and helped two temporary doctors become permanent.
Mayor Herb Pond has called the recruitment push “mission critical” for the city, its surrounding First Nations, and local industry, given Prince Rupert’s role as Canada’s third-largest port. A new $16.5-million emergency department, funded by $9.9 million from the province and $6.6 million from the Northwest Regional Hospital District, opened in September 2025. Two internationally trained doctors have already started through provincial programs, with another expected in summer 2026.
The task force shows what can happen when the whole community pulls together, its members say. Councillor Nick Adey, who helped launch the effort, put it simply: “We needed one thing to work on. And once the task force had a sense of purpose, people just started making things happen.”
