The Carillon asks some people in-the-know, read on to see what they said.
In April 2024, the final report of research regarding the condition of healthcare in rural Saskatchewan, conducted by the Saskatchewan Population Health and Evaluation Research Unit (SPHERU) in partnership with the University of Regina, was published.
As per the report that is publicly available, health facilities in CUPE local 5430 regions experienced 533 service disruptions, for a total duration of 2,932 days or the equivalent of 8 years of disruptions across all facilities between Aug 2019 and July 2023. These disruptions occurred once every three days and lasted for an average of 5.5 days. Their data also shows that the number of disruptive episodes increased consistently each year.
Issues of shortages of healthcare staff and low morale amongst healthcare workers have also been frequently reported on. In her conversation with Regina Leader Post, Suzanne Kuchinka, mayor of the village of Macoun in southeast Saskatchewan, mentioned how the rural areas are “dying for doctors” and that it has been difficult to keep family doctors who either choose to retire or move elsewhere.
The issue was also highlighted during the provincial election campaigning recently when Saskatchewan New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Carla Beck held a media conference in August to raise concerns about the mismanagement of the healthcare system by the present government and issues with the Administrative Information Management System (AIMS) payment processing system.
As per the report by Saskatoon Star Phoenix that covered the event, Beck talked about a leaked memo the NDP received which revealed that healthcare workers in the province are not being paid on time.
“Stuff like this are reasons why we have some of the worst retention rates for health care workers in the entire country,” she said in the conference. Beck also announced in the official release of her platform for the provincial elections that the party aims to hire around 800 healthcare workers and improve the condition of healthcare services in the province.
To better understand the scope of the crisis in the healthcare system of Saskatchewan as well as possible remedies for the same, the Carillon spoke to Dan Florizone, Executive-in-Residence and Professional Affiliate at the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy and former President and CEO of the Saskatoon Health Region.
Florizone points out that the province is facing shortages of staff going beyond doctors and nurses in ERs and hospitals. “We’re seeing a whole host of shortages from paramedics to other first responders to the technicians and technologists that might do your x-ray or conduct lab services.”
He continues, “We’re also seeing [shortages] in the areas of the non-formal regulatory professions where we have challenges hiring people to do basic housekeeping and maintenance and those types of services. Now, historically they haven’t created huge disruptions, but it’s starting to emerge as an issue.”
Speaking about the reason behind such shortages, Florizone mentions that the demand of the healthcare services shifted in the province and the country, and the supply has not caught up. “In the system, we see an aging population, we see needs that have emerged in areas like mental health and addictions.”
He then emphasizes the impacts of an aging population, “You’ve got this bolus of seniors that is coming through the system. And on the demand side, when we think about how we’re serving them, what’s really lacking is a lot of the community-based services. What we supply right now in terms of services are centered on episodic care […] this episodic care is being outstripped by long-term chronic disease.”
He believes that more emphasis needs to be put on hiring family physicians. “Canadian Institute of Health Information just in the last week published a report that said just over 5 million Canadians don’t have access to a primary care physician. That’s a big number and that represents a major factor in overwhelming an already stretched health system.”
Florizone also emphasized that the state of morale for the existing healthcare staff has consistently been low, especially after the pandemic. “For years we’ve been forecasting a bolus of staff retirements and those really didn’t happen according to our projections until now. So, if someone was kind of on the fence of whether they should retire or not, it seems like COVID and that pandemic pushed them over to the point that some of the staff are declaring ‘I’m not up for this. I don’t want to continue to do this.’”
He continues, “So, it’s been a bit demoralizing in the system. It’s hard to work. That work is very, very difficult and if someone can retire, they seem to be off and that sort of exasperates the problem that we already have in terms of shortage of healthcare workers.”
He also highlights the safety risks of working as a healthcare professional and how that furthers the problem of staff shortages, “We also have an all-time high of sick time. We are less safe than any industry in Canada. Healthcare injures more workers than any other sector.”
He acknowledges that there’s been significant improvements with workplace safety in the province, but also says, “the exception is healthcare. It actually continues to injure at a high rate. It continues to put staff off and those staff that are often to be replaced. So, we have high illness, sick time, high injury, disability, and we have increasing challenges around replacing people who are not there.”
The crisis however is not just predictable up to significant accuracy but also manageable because it is predictable, Florizone points out. “We can actually predict demand a year in advance […] There’s no guarantee that that’s going to be the future, but it certainly is a very effective tool in trying to understand the shifts that are occurring and the emphasis that needs to be placed on the system.”
Continuing, he says, “I think what we need to do is… focus not only on recruitment, but also retention and possibly working on projection based on science. So, we forecast out what we need and then we develop a team approach to deliver care. We strategically understand what we’re going to shore up and how we’re going to deliver that care.”
Talking on healthcare strategy, Florizone says, “We make more investments in the community to prevent people from becoming ill and in crisis that require hospital stays in the first place […] It’s not that it’s a simple prediction, but this is entirely predictable. So, if you can predict it, then all you need to do is really plan towards it,” he finished.
