-Communities can use site to post information on lifestyle, economic development-
OSOYOOS TIMES-August 27, 2008-
By Paul EverestrnOsoyoos Times
In an effort to reveal the benefits of living and working in B.C.'s Interior to doctors across Canada and around the world, Interior Health has launched a new website designed to help showcase local communities.
The site www.betterhere.ca came online in July and is being advertised in medical journals and websites in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and South Africa.
Each community within Interior Health's coverage area has a page on the website where visitors can view or link to information on an area's tourism attractions, economic development, local events as well as any medical practice opportunities.
Osoyoos's page outlines housing choices in the area, education opportunities for children and a rundown of some of the amenities offered here.
The page also has a link to a website that provides doctors interested in the Osoyoos area with more information on financial incentives for physicians who choose to practise here, details about the South Okanagan lifestyle and an overview of the local medical community.
Dr. Alan Ruddiman, chief of medical staff at Oliver's South Okanagan General Hospital, said the website is an ideal tool for the area's physician recruitment effort as it connects all the information a doctor interested in this community may want to consider in one place.
It gives them good one-stop shopping, he said.
Such a tool is extremely important right now, Ruddiman added, as the Osoyoos-Oliver area still needs to recruit as many as eight doctors during the next three years to cover the area's growing patient load and fill vacancies left by physicians who have retired or moved.
Cathy Stashyn, Interior Health's physician recruitment leader, said the new website will also allow the health authority and doctor-seeking communities to analyze who's looking at the postings online and therefore determine the best ways to market themselves to physicians.
She added that Google Analytics, a tool offered by the Google search-engine service which provides statistics about website visitors, was installed into the new website to actually see if it works and to look where people are visiting, where they're visiting from.rnAccording to an Interior Health press release, 78 per cent of first-time visitors to the site were from within Canada with 43 visits from the United Kingdom, 36 from the U.S. and 18 from South Africa.
Stashyn said that once the website becomes better known, it will act as a conduit between doctors interested in working in the Interior, the health authority and communities such as Osoyoos.
We really want traffic to be flowing in to us and increasing the number of candidates that either go directly to either the community or to the posting, she said.
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