Health minister touts upcoming trip to Philippines with SHA, Sask. Polytechnic

Saskatchewan Health Minister Paul Merriman will be travelling halfway around the world in the next couple of weeks as part of a larger effort to recruit as many health-care workers to Saskatchewan as possible.

He admits there are “challenges” right now across the rural health-care system and in bigger centres like Saskatoon and Regina.

For the last several months, family physicians haven’t been taking on new patients in Saskatoon, while rural areas like Kamsack, Wilkie and Broadview have seen service level slowdowns at their health-care centres and hospitals, according to the Saskatchewan Health Authority. There have also been lab and X-ray service disruptions in Moose Jaw, Lampman, Norquay and Macklin.

Merriman said the problem isn’t unique to Saskatchewan.

“It’s something that we’re seeing across Canada and North America,” he said.

Since the spring, the health minister said, the province has recruited 107 doctors — 51 are primary care physicians. Merriman believes Saskatchewan has the most aggressive plan in Canada to recruit, retain, incentivize and train health-care workers.

The trip to the Philippines is part of that. Starting Nov. 28, a series of workshops and information sessions will be held over five days in Manila. Merriman will lead a delegation with representatives of the Saskatchewan Health Authority, Saskatchewan’s two universities and Saskatchewan Polytechnic.

“We’re going to be hiring individuals right on the floor of our training centre, (and will) be able to bring those individuals back later on this year,” he said.

According to Merriman, Saskatchewan needs more than 1,000 health-care workers in the next several years.

So far, 150 nurse training seats have been added into post-secondary educational facilities, and incentives of up to $50,000 are being offered for 120 hard-to-recruit positions.

“We’re hoping we can pull people from outside of Saskatchewan into our province … and we’re looking at making sure that all areas of our health care — not just the nurses and the doctors but our continuing care aids, our CLXTs (combined laboratory and X-ray technologists), our technicians — are all supported,” he explained.

As far as keeping the health-care workers already working in Saskatchewan, Merriman said they stay on the job for several reasons.

“The No. 1 thing is their commitment to their patients … but we also have to look at the overall compensation packages. We have one of the best compensation packages for physicians in the country. We have lots of incentives for individuals who have been working,” said Merriman.

The health minister also admitted that doctors and nurses have made it clear they need more support, so they don’t have to take on extra shifts or be mandated to stay at work.

New Administrative Information Management System setback

Just one week after a new scheduling, payroll, finance and supply system was rolled out, it was paused — leading to some significant concerns.

The Administrative Information Management System (AIMS) was meant to replace dozens of other older systems for the Saskatchewan Health Authority.

“The decision was made to pause it, and it should not affect payroll as we never did a payroll run with AIMS. So we’ve reverted back to our Legacy system,” said Merriman.

However, Merriman also admitted there were concerns about “scheduling discrepancies and payroll issues.”

“We wanted to make sure that our staff was paid properly, that the scheduling was done, and we all did this with patient safety (as) our No. 1 priority. We’ve been able to rectify most of the problems and the payroll run will run as normal this week,” he added.

Merriman said several simulation tests had run in the last few months, and there was a point where the SHA decided to roll out the new AIMS system.

“I’m confident we’ll be able to launch the AIM system; I just don’t have a timeline on that right now,” he said.