REGINA — The main parties at the Legislature ended the week by firing at each other again over health care, with the Opposition claiming the Sask. Party government is reneging on a commitment to primary care.
At a news conference Friday at the Legislature, Opposition Leader Carla Beck accused Premier Scott Moe of being “about to break yet another promise to the people of this province, and that promise was one made in the last provincial election that every person in Saskatchewan would have a family doctor by 2028.”
To make her point, Beck pointed to data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information released this week, which she said showed that the “number of family physicians working in Saskatchewan per 100,000 residents actually dropped and dropped by 5.2 percent.”
“These numbers while dismal are consistent and they’re consistent with numbers that we heard earlier from Angus Reid that showed 63 percent of people in this province either don’t have a family physician or they can’t access the family physician that they have on record. And that’s a huge spike when we look at numbers similar numbers from 10 years ago.”
Beck accused the government of not seeming to “understand the severity of what’s going on for Saskatchewan people in our health-care system.”
“They like to pretend that they have a plan. I don’t know if they’re calling it the most ambitious or the most aggressive health-care retention plan, recruitment plan in the country. The numbers don’t lie and 63 percent of people in this province know that that’s a lie when they go to find a family doctor or try to make an appointment.”
She also pointed to ER closures, saying that given the trends it was “no wonder that we have up to 15 emergency rooms closed on any given day.”
Beck made the comments soon after news this week that the Regina Urgent Care Centre would be operating at reduced hours on the weekend due to a shortage of physicians.
She said this was “surprising no one.”
“Again this this is a government that has gotten very comfortable with the grip and grin, with the ribbon-cutting, with an announcement and has failed and is spiralling when it comes to actually delivering results in those, whether it’s the Urgent Care Centre or just providing health care in the province period,” said Beck.
“So unfortunately I’m not surprised. It is exactly what the physicians told them would happen if they didn’t address the shortage of physicians before they opened the Urgent Care Centre.”
As for what needs to be addressed, Beck pointed to the administrative burden doctors are under, as well as looking at making changes to the fee structure. She also pointed to a “government in power right now that is not listening.”
“When you sit and meet with those providers whether it’s physicians or nurses or lab and x-ray techs they know what the problems are. Absolutely they do. But they also have solutions and what they are so frustrated about is that you have a government that refuses to listen. Refuses to listen to their concerns and also refuses to engage them in some of the solutions. That’s the starting point.”
In response, the Sask. Party government reiterated it had “made a commitment in the 2024 Throne Speech that every Saskatchewan person will have access to primary care by the end of 2028. Primary care includes access to both family physicians and nurse practitioners.”
The government also said in a statement that the CIHI data referenced by the NDP “shows Saskatchewan has added 174 net new doctors over four years including more family physicians. The data also shows an 18 per cent increase in Nurse Practitioners who are a key part in increasing accessing to primary care for Saskatchewan residents. According to CIHI, Saskatchewan has also added 1,505 net new nurses over the last four years.”
The province acknowledged there is more work to do and said it will “keep putting patients first” by training, recruiting and retaining more health-care professionals.
“Only the lost and reckless NDP could spin these statistics as bad news while offering zero solutions on what they would do for health care in Saskatchewan.”
