REGINA — The closure of a community clinic that has been open only seven years in Regina has drawn concern from the Official Opposition.
The NDP’s rural and remote health critic, Jared Clarke, told reporters at the Legislature that patients were notified, in a letter sent Sept. 22, that Gardens Community Health Centre would close its doors as of Nov. 30.
“In the letter, the clinic said it cannot secure sufficient patient staffing,” said Clarke. “This is exactly what happens when you shift decision-making and resources away from the frontline health-care workers and give it to politicians and bureaucrats in Regina. Doctors are leaving the profession or the province altogether after 18 years of Sask. Party mismanagement.”
It was Clarke’s understanding that the clinic has “been short-staffed for over 10 months, and that there are two doctors that are retiring now because they're just burnt out. That they have worked so hard and so long to try and keep this facility going, that they just can't do it anymore. So they are retiring.”
When the clinic opened, it was particularly targeted at seniors in the area. The impact on seniors was another concern Clarke had.
“So this clinic was opened back in 2018. The government initially budgeted $4.3 million and $3 million annually to the clinic. It serves both in-house patients, but also seniors outside in long-term care facilities, and the doctors were making rounds. I don't know what the impact to the seniors program that this closure will make, and I'm hoping SHA will clarify that for patients.”
As for what needed to be done to address the need for health-care professionals, Clarke said “everything should be on the table as to how we can attract and retain doctors at the health-care centre.”
Clarke said this will add to the numbers of people in the province who "don't currently have a family doctor, and that means that people are going to now end up in urgent-care centres. They're going to end up at emergency rooms. This is not an effective way to run the health-care system. The Sask. Party needs to come up with a solution.”
Clarke acknowledged that better pay elsewhere could be playing a role in attracting doctors and health professionals to other jurisdictions.
“We certainly saw a new pay system set up with doctors in the last year. I think doctors have said that they appreciate some of that change, but there's more to do,” Clarke said.
“Many of the doctors that we talk to really like to be here in Saskatchewan. But it's the disrespect, the chaos that is in our health-care system, the fact that it's breaking in front of their eyes, and they can take a better job that has better pay in another jurisdiction. And at this stage of the game, when you're working that hard and feeling so overwhelmed on a daily basis, maybe that pay is going to entice you to go somewhere else.”
The real issue, Clarke said, is work-life balance. “And right now, because the system is so stressed, they are not able to achieve that work-life balance,” Clarke said.
“One of the things that I have heard repeatedly from frontline health-care workers recently is that they are telling their own children not to go into health care in this province anymore. That's shocking. Long-time nurses that I talk to were very, very, very proud to be nurses at one point, and were very proud to tell their children that nursing is a good job, and you should go into this job. Now they don't. Many, many nurses and health-care professionals in this province say, I don't want my kid to go into this industry. I'm hearing that more and more across the province. It's an indication that our system is broken.”
SHA responds
The SHA has provided a response, in which they noted that this was a privately run clinic.
"While the SHA has partnered with this privately-run clinic to support allied health programming, this clinic and its physicians ultimately operates independent of the SHA," they stated. "The Gardens Community Health Centre has assured the SHA it is committed to ensuring patients are supported until the end of November. The SHA is committed to further supporting patients impacted by the closure of the private medical clinic, including working with the health centre’s physicians to explore their ability to support patient referrals, prescription refills and ongoing care."
The SHA also said it will continue SHA-delivered patient services, including "maintaining our staff complement – which includes one full-time registered nurse, one part-time pharmacist and a paramedic who is assigned based on need. We are currently developing plans on where service providers currently based at the Gardens Community Health Centre will be located in the future, and we will communicate these plans to patients and staff when they are finalized."
The SHA also said that in 2018, the Gardens Community Health Centre was home to the SHA’s Senior House Calls Program, but that the program transitioned during the pandemic to the Intermediate Care Services Team, providing home-based support by an integrated and collaborative team of primary health care providers. "The Intermediate Care Services Team is no longer directly operated out of the Gardens Community Health Centre, but continue to provide supportive services to this clinic and others in the community."
