Saskatchewan NDP raise alarm over health care recruitment and retention

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The Saskatchewan NDP is again taking aim at the provincial government’s policies to recruit and retain health care workers, with a particular eye to west-central Saskatchewan.

Speaking Wednesday at the Legislative Building, health critic Vicki Mowat said health care centre closures have been an ongoing issue over the past four years, highlighting closures in Wilkie as well as spotty ambulance services in Kerrobert.

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“As resources are being pulled from Kindersley, Unity and even Alberta, wait times are rising, putting patient lives at risk,” Mowat said.

Information obtained via a freedom of information request by the NDP covering a four-year period regarding rural and remote closures shows 789 days collectively of disrupted services over that period.

“What we’re seeing consistently is closures across the west-central area. We see a pattern of this government not providing recruiting and retention of health care workers,” Mowat said.

In an email response, the province said it was “committed to strengthening and stabilizing health care services across the province, including in Lloydminster and the surrounding area.”

The province again referenced the possibility of creating a nursing task force, which it sought to do on the eve of the provincial election, saying it has recently met with the unions representing nurses in Saskatchewan.

The closures range from emergency rooms to laboratory services, radiography to obstetric services. Mowat said the closures are directly tied to staff shortages that she and the NDP say fall at the feet of the government.

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“Simply put, though, the recruiting and retention strategy has failed, it is failing right now. We have health care workers leaving in droves. We have record numbers of folks that are leaving,” Mowat said.

The province has presented the Health Human Resource Action Plan, first launched in 2022, as a means to address some of these issues.

Numbers provided in September 2024 by the Ministry of Health do not track how many doctors and nurses are leaving the profession, opting instead to tally the total numbers. From 2019 to 2023, family physicians in Saskatchewan increased from 1,340 to 1,466 and specialists increased from 1,260 to 1,441.

In 2019, there were 11,685 RNs and 273 NPs, compared to 13,605 RNs and 360 NPs in 2023, according to the ministry.

At the same time, the NDP cited a December 2024 report from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) that indicated there were 526 fewer registered nurses in rural Saskatchewan from 2018 to 2023 and the second-worst patient-to-physician ratio at 221 physicians per 100,000 citizens.

Rural and remote health critic Meara Conway called out three specific Saskatchewan Party MLAs from west-central constituencies: Kim Gartner, James Thorsteinson and Colleen Young.

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“We haven’t heard a peep from these MLAs. We know that the government touts a recruitment and retention plan that is not worth the paper that it’s printed on,” Conway said.

Kristine Weisbeck, a Lloydminster patient advocate and first responder, wrote a letter read by Conway on Wednesday.

“Health care in Lloydminster is encountering considerable difficulties stemming from resource shortages across various sectors, most notably insufficient staffing,” wrote Weisbeck.

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