It is a huge step forward that the province has levelled the playing field for Hamilton when it comes to recruiting internationally trained doctors who have finished post-graduate work at McMaster University or other Ontario medical schools.

In a city where 40,000 people are without a family physician, the provincial change will make a huge difference. And it's way past time for this change to have taken place.

For years, our city has suffered relative to its neighbours because it was not deemed underserviced. Underserviced communities were able to take advantage of opportunities and options, including financial incentives, to attract doctors.

Certainly it made little sense on the ground in Hamilton. How could we not be underserviced if we have been short of doctors for years? At this point, our city needs 40 doctors.

Despite the numbers, an outdated policy -- developed to help remote and northern communities attract and retain doctors -- deemed us not underserviced because area hospitals are teaching hospitals and we have a medical school at McMaster University. On paper, between doctors-in-waiting and doctors already practising, we have been defined as adequately served.

Tell that to the families whose only option for medical care is the emergency room or walk-in clinic, neither of which are designed to take the place of family physicians. But when you can't find a family doctor who's taking new patients, there's not much choice if a family member needs medical attention.

And it's ironic the "amenity" of having a medical school in our midst has actually worked against us for years.

The upshot of missing the "underserviced" label was that foreign-trained doctors who receive their Canadian training at our own medical school at McMaster have not been permitted to practise in Hamilton right after finishing school. They have been required to put in five years in a community deemed underserviced.

The province announced late last week that it has essentially scrapped its underserviced-area program, replacing it with a program that will allow northern and extremely rural areas to offer financial grants to attract doctors.

It means most of the communities around Hamilton, such as Halton, will no longer qualify to offer tens of thousands of dollars in incentives. Halton doesn't have a doctor shortage at this point, largely because of foreign-trained doctors who made up between 50 and 60 per cent of its recruits in the past two years. During that same time period, Hamilton's shortage increased to 40 physicians because our recruiters were not permitted to go after any of the 175 new foreign doctors who set up practice in Ontario each year.

The next crop of international medical graduates will finish postgraduate training at the end of June. The levelled playing field means it will be easier to find a family doctor in Hamilton by the summer. And that's good news for all of us, whether we have a doctor or not.

Editorials are written by members of the editorial board. They represent the position of the newspaper, not necessarily the individual author.