Sask. NDP says primary care crisis stretches across province

As doctor shortages persist in Saskatchewan, the official opposition is calling on the provincial government to put windfall revenues towards the crisis.

“Maintaining the status quo is not cost neutral,” Saskatchewan NDP Leader Carla Beck told the media Wednesday.

The NDP wants to see the Saskatchewan Party provide urgent funding to family doctors already working in the province to help relieve their overhead costs in offices and clinics as well as review the fee-for-service billing structure doctors are currently subject to.

Without doctors able to accept new patients in Saskatoon, Beck said things like system avoidance — patients waiting to access care until they are quite sick and subsequently requiring more care — are being seen.

Beck emphasized the importance of an investment by the province, using a resource many provinces don’t have, for its effect on stabilizing family medicine in Saskatchewan.

She didn’t hold back, calling the situation facing Saskatchewan a “crisis.”

“We don’t take the term ‘crisis’ … lightly,” Beck emphasized.

She said it’s fair to say there is difficulty accessing primary care and family doctors far beyond Saskatoon.

The fact the largest city in the province doesn’t have a single physician able to take on new patients — a fact Beck called “extraordinary” — shows that what the province is doing right now with regards to health care and recruitment is not enough.

“It’s a deterrent for folks in terms of where they make their homes,” said NDP Health Critic Vicki Mowat.

Beck highlighted the work of her party, including Mowat, in visiting communities across Saskatchewan over the summer and hearing the concerns of people living across the province. The need to support people living here, including doctors, while recruiting more to work in Saskatchewan is paramount, she said.

Mowat said more than $118 million has been invested into health care by the B.C. government. She doesn’t expect to see that sort of figure here, but estimated about $20 million to $30 million would be appropriate to invest in the province’s health-care needs.

She noted the government announced a $2-billion windfall revenue that has not been invested into the Saskatchewan health-care system.

When it comes to the province announcing a plan to attract health-care staff to the province, she said some “real investment that supports that” would be noteworthy to put behind those efforts.

“This is about looking at the current structure that exists right now,” Mowat said, referring to a structure fraught with doctors experiencing burnout, closing their practices and feeling unsupported by the provincial government.

Mowat called the rates of burnout in the province “alarming.”

Fee-for-service model

A potential option to reduce the load on doctors working now is implementing new models and pay structures for physicians in Saskatchewan.

Mowat reported hearing from doctors in different communities that the fee-for-service compensation model requires review.

A different format, like a team-based model where each member of a clinic’s staff is on salary, would provide “a very different working environment,” according to Mowat.

She also reported hearing an interest from new family doctors in maintaining more of a work-life balance.

Implementing such alternative structures to improve quality of care for patients and quality of life for physicians is crucial, Mowat explained, as Saskatchewan is not the only province facing these shortages.

She said the province needs to be attractive to people within the health-care sector if it wants to ensure successful recruitment to counteract the problems it’s facing right now.

More staff needed

Stabilization in the short term and a medium-term rebuilding of the health-care system in the province with the input of communities and physicians is the vision Beck has for Saskatchewan.

But she said the government is not acknowledging physicians who are leaving the province or trying to find a way to address the problems contributing to their exodus.

“It makes those who are struggling right now feel like they’ve not been heard,” she said.

With urgent care centres being built and planned for in Regina and Saskatoon, respectively, Beck said one question comes up regularly: Staffing.

“It’s great to have buildings; that capital investment is important,” Beck said, “but it doesn’t work if we don’t have staff to staff those buildings and that is a concern we hear consistently.”

Mowat felt the most challenging aspect of the problems is the lack of resolution as of now. While the provincial government has announced a health-care staffing plan with goals for recruitment of doctors from other provinces, it doesn’t adequately address how to keep people working in the system.

“It’s been a month where we haven’t had family doctors available in Saskatoon. I think it speaks to the fact that this plan is not working, that there needs to be a real injection of funding,” Mowat said.

Responding to comments made by Health Minister Paul Merriman last week, Mowat noted people with family physicians tend to have better health outcomes, live longer, and build community relationships with their care provider that can help them proactively counteract future illnesses.

“There is a very big difference between accessing care at a walk-in clinic and having a family doctor,” she said.