A CBC News analysis has found Nova Scotia doctors are leaving for other provinces at an accelerating pace, and stemming the outflow could cost tens of millions in salary increases.

For five years in a row, Nova Scotia has seen more doctors leave than arrive. The pressure is on for a newly hired recruiting team to turn the loss into a positive, but the team has work to do to catch up with the rest of the country.

As part of The Search, CBC hosted public forums in three communities to talk about health care. The last of those forums was Wednesday night, in Yarmouth, and asked the question: Does every community need to have every health-care service?

Recruiters in B.C. have managed to do something Nova Scotia has not: increase the number of doctors in the province.

From matchmaking to babysitting, the physician recruiter in Goderich, Ont., went to elaborate lengths to convince doctors to move to the small town.

Dr. Simon Bonnington is touted as Nova Scotia's ideal recruit. But he says if he wasn't so determined to live in Nova Scotia, even he might have given up on the 'fiendishly difficult' process to work here.

The Hants Health and Wellness Team in Windsor, N.S. takes a holistic approach to treating patients and empowers them to be involved in their own care.

The North End Community Health Centre in Halifax uses equality, not hierarchy to treat patients. Doctors work in a team with nurses, a social worker and a nutritionist.

A family doctor in Neils Harbour in northern Cape Breton has posted a Facebook message to her former fellow med school and residency colleagues, hoping some of them will come and work in her community.

Dalhousie University's South West Nova teaching site focuses on getting family medicine residents practising in rural communities, with an added bonus of acting as a recruiting tool for those communities.

When the Municipality of Clare was confronted with a doctor crisis in 2003, it took charge of its own destiny. The community financed a new medical clinic and took a hyper-local approach to cultivating future doctors.

Internationally trained physicians currently have no route to work in Nova Scotia, but a report that recommends bringing back a program that tests their skills is now in the hands of the provincial government.

When it comes to the medical system, there's a long list of reasons why doctors don't want to set up practice in Nova Scotia: the low pay, the politics, the expense. Despite that, one doctor from England says moving to the province was the best decision he ever made.

As Nova Scotia struggles to recruit and retain family doctors, it continues to pay those already here less than their counterparts elsewhere in Canada. Is it time to change the compensation model?

More than half of family physicians in Nova Scotia are over the age of 50. Dr. Ken Murray in Neils Harbour is one of them, his story indicative of the doctor-shortage problem facing the province.