'Dying for doctors': Report cites concerns with health care in rural Saskatchewan

Suzanne Kuchinka, mayor of the village of Macoun in southeast Saskatchewan, says it's been a struggle for years to keep family doctors, because they retire or move elsewhere.

In Lloydminster, a city on the Saskatchewan-Alberta boundary, Mayor Gerald Aalbers says doctors who want to work in his community are facing roadblocks.

These are some of the health-care issues facing small Saskatchewan communities.

A report released this month cited hundreds of service disruptions over four years due to staffing shortages, along with morale issues among workers.

"We're dying for doctors," Kuchinka said recently in Regina at an annual meeting of municipal mayors and councillors.

Aalbers said he knows a Lloydminster woman who's internationally trained to be a doctor but is unable to enrol in a Saskatchewan program that would help her practise in the city.

She's now moving to New Brunswick to work, he said.

"It's a real challenge. I'd love to see how we can recruit more doctors to our communities and maintain the ones we have," Aalbers said.

The Saskatchewan population health and evaluation research unit at the University of Regina released the report looking at the state of rural health care in the province.

The team went through government and media reports, interviewed workers and held group discussions in a large virtual event.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 5430 funded the project, though the report says the union did not direct or design the research.

Project lead Nuelle Novik, an associate professor at the university, said the team counted 533 service disruptions from August 2019 to July 2023 in rural regions with union staff. The disruptions included temporary closures of a hospital or reduced hours.

It means patients drove further away for care, said Novik. And when they got to a larger city with services, they were also waiting longer.

"This is something we should all be concerned about," Novik said.