But for Florida family physician George Gleisner, that wasn’t enough.

There was something distinctly lacking — something he found in Canada and, more specifically, in Milton.

We often hear about Canadian doctors leaving to work in the United States — part of the so-called “brain drain.”

But, look behind the doors of some medical offices, and you might find just the opposite — family physicians like Gleisner, who decided to uproot his family and leave the U.S. in favour of starting a new life in Milton.

“There’s a better quality of life in Canada,” Gleisner said.

It’s late on a recent Friday afternoon, and Gleisner is about to take off for the weekend. Yes, he actually has weekends off now, something that wasn’t the case in Florida, when he was on-call nearly all the time.

But before starting his weekend, Gleisner took some time to speak with a Champion reporter about just what it was that drew him to the true north.

Primarily, it was a lifestyle shift, he said. With a wife and a now nine-year-old daughter, Gleisner said he was tired of the long hours and being on-call most of the time, with little left in the day for those most important to him.

A typical day started at 6:30 a.m. and included a full day of work followed by time spent with patients in the hospital; family physicians were expected to assume care of their patients whether in the doctor’s office or in the hospital, he said.

Needless to say, that made for very long hours. “I said it was time to make a change,” Gleisner said.

He joined Dr. Nav Dhiraj at the Hawthorne Village Medical Centre on Derry Road in May of last year. Now, his hours are flexible and he normally works 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

“It’s so much more pleasant — I’ll go home tonight and my beeper won’t be going off. Sleep’s important!” Gleisner said.

Although he could have opened his own practice, Gleisner said he chose the Hawthorne Village Medical Centre, so he would be able to ask questions and bounce ideas off another doctor.

He purposely doesn’t hold hospital privileges because of the hours and responsibility that would add, and also because he’s still learning his way through Ontario’s health-care system.

Gleisner was able to take advantage of the Registration Through Practice Assessment (RPA) Program, offered through the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO).

The initiative carefully assesses physicians and grants those who are qualified certificates of registration to practise in the province with an agreement to work in an under-serviced area — which Milton was when Gleisner began here — for five years.

It’s a necessarily thorough process, Gleisner said.

“I’m not going to say ‘I’m American, I should be accepted carte blanche.’”

The RPA program — funded by the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care — is an initiative of the CPSO to address the province’s doctor shortage, said Kathryn Clarke, CPSO senior communications co-ordinator.

Through the program, doctors practising in another province or in the U.S., who might not otherwise meet all the requirements, are permitted to practise in Ontario with restricted licences.

It allows accepted doctors to “skip” certain exams they would otherwise have to take to be qualified to practise here, Clarke said.

Once a doctor has successfully undergone an assessment, he receives a restricted licence to practise under supervision in Ontario for a year. After that, he’s again evaluated, and it’s determined if he can continue practising without further supervision, Clarke explained.

Gleisner was born and raised in Wisconsin, which is where he did his medical training. He did his residency in Miami Beach, Florida, before moving to Palm Beach County in South Florida, where he stayed until 2006, focusing on internal medicine and geriatrics.

Besides the hectic lifestyle, another factor in Gleisner’s decision to leave was the high cost of living and the increase in litigation, with patients suing doctors not an unusual occurrence.

Gleisner was sued twice, something he feels no need to hide.

“It wouldn’t have happened in Canada,” he said.

There’s a different mentality in the U.S. toward suing, he said, with many patients thinking a bad outcome means malpractice.

Also, there are no costs required up front to sue someone in the States, unlike in Canada where the cost to pay a lawyer would be prohibitive for many people.

As a result of all the litigation, malpractice insurance is quite expensive for American doctors — Gleisner said he spent $33,000 in one year for it.

Gleisner said some Canadian-trained doctors decide to return to Canada for that reason alone.

Also, although most people believe family doctors earn more in the U.S., it’s difficult to say whether that’s the case once the long hours, risks and costs are taken into consideration, he said.

Something else that caused Gleisner to leave was the fact the two physicians with whom he worked had retired, and Gleisner couldn’t find replacements because of the rising practice costs. This meant he had to do everything himself, which made for even longer, more exhausting days, he said.

And then there was the unpredictable and often destructive Florida weather — his practice had to close for a week due to Hurricane Wilma.

Gleisner applied to the RPA program in March of 2005. It wasn’t difficult deciding where to live, since his wife’s family lives in Mississauga.

Settling there, he could commute every day to Milton, which was then an under-serviced community — boding well for a new family physician.

Gleisner said his new patients are coming in steadily, but not in a huge rush.

“I’ve been comfortably busy, but I haven’t been inundated. It’s not like I’m turning people away every day,” he said.

He speculates one of the main reasons is some residents who move here from cities like Mississauga and Brampton don’t change family doctors.

There are currently seven family physicians in town accepting new patients.

“From a family physician point of view, I think we’re keeping up,” he said.

Milton was designated as under-serviced in 2003 using 2001 census population figures. But that status was lost this past December after numerous doctors, like Gleisner, were successfully recruited.

Being designated an “under-serviced” community by the Ministry of Health might sound bad, but it actually comes with a number of perks and incentives to recruit doctors.

A new application to the Ministry to re-designate the town as an under-serviced community has been submitted using the 2006 census data, and a final decision is expected before the end of the year, said Halton physician recruitment co-ordinator Angela Sugden Praysner.

Dr. Mike Goodwin, a family doctor in Niagara and district director for the Ontario Medical Association, said he doesn’t often hear of U.S.-trained doctors coming to practise in Canada.

“My sense is that he’s a fairly rare bird,” Goodwin said of Gleisner.

When family doctors do come to Canada, they tend to be doctors who started out here, left and then returned, he said.

In 2006, there were 238 doctors who returned to Canada and 207 who went abroad. In Ontario, 92 physicians left the province in 2006 and 78 returned, he said.

“There’s still a long way to go in making Ontario competitive,” Goodwin added.

Gleisner might prefer practising here but it’s certainly not all rosy, and he doesn’t hide the fact there are specific challenges he’s facing now that he didn’t in the U.S. — including difficulty finding specialists and the ensuing waiting lines.

“There’s no perfect system,” he said. “You work within the limitations.”

Even with those limitations, the lifestyle he’s adopted here is just what he was looking for, he said.

“I’m a lot more happy.”