A Newfoundland medical clinic held a lottery this week to determine which patients could see its two new doctors.

The clinic had 4,000 potential patients apply to see the physicians, but could only accommodate 2,000.

So the Gander Medical Clinic, in Gander, Nfld., held a lottery to find the first new patients for Drs. Amanda Scott and Celine Dawson.

The hopeful patients were contacted Monday evening and were told if they had a new doctor.

Larry Dawson, manager of the clinic, said he held the lottery to avoid the chaos that greeted the last introduction of a new doctor at the clinic.

"The last time we tried to do it we ended up with a line-up going outside the doors of the clinic and people were lined up early in the morning," Dawson said Tuesday during an appearance on CTV Newsnet.

One of the lottery's winners, Pat Feltham, said she felt very fortunate to have her name drawn. She and her husband had gone two years without a family doctor.

While she doesn't have any pressing health concerns, her husband has to have blood drawn and a prescription renewed every three months. He had been going to the emergency room to get care.

"It's your health," Feltham said during an interview on CTV Newsnet. "If you won the lottery, if you're broken, the lottery can't fix you but your doctor hopefully can."

Luckily for the lottery losers, each of the new doctors will accept another 500 patients in about six months.

Dawson said that the clinic now has nine doctors, which is as many as it can operate with. However, Dawson said Gander needs about four or five more doctors to meet the health-care needs of the community and to ease the burden on overworked physicians.

"The national average for physicians for patient load is about 1,200," Dawson said. "And most of our doctors are carrying between 2,500 and 3,000."

However, it is difficult to attract young physicians to the community because Newfoundland charges lower fees for many services, Dawson said.

He warned that in the next two to three years, two doctors will retire from his clinic, which means about 5,000 more people will be without a family physician if he doesn't have more new doctors in place.