REGINA - Provincial officials marked a milestone Monday with the second anniversary of the Health Human Resources Action Plan.
Provincial cabinet ministers including Minister of Health Everett Hindley, Minister of Rural and Remote Health Tim McLeod, and Minister of Advanced Education Colleen Young marked the occasion by providing an update on achievements of the Action Plan at Sask Polytechnic in Regina. The plan launched in September 2022 was a $300 million investment, with four pillars to Recruit, Train, Incentivize and Retain.
The ministers listed a long line of government accomplishments over the past two years, but their update also included a couple of new announcements including a new pilot project as well as efforts towards establishing a nurses' task force. Details include the following:
• Over 218 physicians have been recruited to Saskatchewan from outside of the province and 35 physicians from outside the country since September 2022. This includes 87 family physicians and 131 specialists.
• There has been recruitment of medical specialists for hard-to-fill positions, include one recently hired pediatric gastroenterologist, four recently hired psychiatrists, two new perfusionists, and physician assistants now in the final hiring stage.
• Over 1,400 recent nursing graduates from Saskatchewan and out-of-province have been hired since December 2022.
• 27 new permanent Nurse Practitioner positions have been posted in rural communities with eight positions are filled.
• Over 400 Internationally Educated Nurses from the Philippines have been recruited, with approximately 280 now trained and working in 70 communities across the province with the remaining number still in the training process.
• For training, the province is pointing to over $100 million to create approximately 870 new training seats in 33 health care programs at provincial post-secondary institutions.
• Among the new training programs are in Occupational Therapy, Speech Language Pathology, Physician Assistant, and Respiratory Therapy, as well as training of Internationally Educated Nurses in the Transition to Registered Nursing in Canada program.
• Residency seats are now available in Regina, Saskatoon, and Prince Albert as well as at various regional colleges across the province.
• Incentive programs include the Rural and Remote Recruitment Incentive, which the province touts as having helped fill more than 350 hard-to-recruit positions.
• For retention of health care, the province points to expanded scope of practice for pharmacists, nurse practitioners, and advanced care paramedics to increase access to services and shorten wait times.
• Minister Hindley also announced Monday that the Ministry of Health in partnership with Saskatchewan Medical Association will be piloting a point-of-care testing project for 16 designated physician-led clinics across Saskatchewan.
• Finally, Minister Hindley announced the government has had preliminary discussions with the unions for registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and also continuing care aides for development of a task force or council of frontline health workers. Hindley said they have been having those conversations and meeting for a number of months now, and said they are ready and able and have the ability to continue those discussions to see what that might look like for frontline healthcare providers in Saskatchewan.
A nursing task force has been something long called for by the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses as well as by opposition New Democrats. Minister Hindley spoke to reporters on where the government is at with the discussions.
“There’s been a lot of discussion over the last number of months about a nursing task force,” said Hindley. “I myself as the Minister, I’ve met with the leadership of SUN back in the fall and shortly after I was appointed as the Minister and have been part of some previous conversation in my previous role as Minister of Mental Health and Addictions. There has been discussions and collaborations at the officials’ level since that point in time. I know that the president of SUN has also spoken to the Premier, at the Council of the Federation meetings in July about the next steps on that. I recently had a meeting with the leadership of SUN and was joined by officials from the Ministry of Health about what the nursing task force - nursing council might look like. And so we’ve been having those discussions very recently about what’s the terms of reference might be, who would be part of that task force or council.”
Hindley told reporters they had seen positive results in the first two years of the Action Plan.
Coming out of the pandemic, he said, “we made a pretty concerted effort to get around the province, more so than ever before, to make sure we are visiting healthcare facilities, and talking to front-line healthcare providers. I know that’s health systems right across the country were probably struggling with this and trying to find a path forward.
Hindley said they continue to this day to "talk to front-line health care providers, trying to find out how do we make the healthcare system better. We’re so grateful for the staff that we have in the healthcare system, but we know that there’s growing demand, there’s a growing population, growing demands on the healthcare system right across the province, whether it’s in our major urban centres like Regina and Saskatoon, regional sites (in) Yorkton, Prince Albert, Swift Current for example, and our rural and remote communities as well.”
The minister also pointed to having created “more permanent, fulltime positions in healthcare. We’ve establish more as part of the Saskatoon, Regina Capacity Pressure Action Plans, to deal with some of the challenges that we face there. We’re continuing to make sure that we hire more staff wherever and when we can.”
Hindley acknowledged more work was needed to be done. “We still have some temporary service disruptions out there. We have facilities that are not running to their optimal nature, I think you could say. We’re up to that challenge to make sure we continue to support the healthcare system here in the province.”
At the same time as the government event at Sask Polytechnic, opposition New Democrats were also in Regina announcing their plan to get out of “last place in health care.”
Opposition Leader Carla Beck released the NDP’s plan to train, retain, and hire more permanent doctors, nurses, and specialists in the public system, according to their news release. The party is pledging to spend $1.1 billion towards critical frontline services and implementing a strategy to keep doctors and nurses in Saskatchewan.
