The provincial government says there are 500 new doctors in Saskatchewan since 2007-08.
The news was announced Oct. 13, with the government releasing a number of figures showing increases, particularly in the rural and remote areas of the province.
Nearly 190 physicians have been recruited to rural and remote communities since the creation of Saskdocs, the physician recruitment agency. Family physicians have increased by 23 per cent and the number of specialists has gone up almost 35 per cent.
In speaking with the News-OptimistWednesday, Greg Ottenbreit, minister of Rural and Remote Health, called the addition of 500 new doctors “great news, not only for the province in urban areas but in rural areas as well.”
Some of the successes, said Ottenbreit, were “based on some of the shortcomings that we recognized when forming government in 2007 and putting some plans in place around those shortcomings, those challenges that we saw.”
He credited a number of training initiatives including increasing the number of undergrad medical education seats from 60 to 100 and doubling the post-grad physician training seats at the College of Medicine to 120.
“What we recognized early on was seeing that training in the province was at around 60 students and the residency positions weren’t really enough to facilitate all of those students finishing up in the province,” said Ottenbreit.
“We’re seeing a lot higher retention rate of our students that we’re training in the province.”
In addition, Ottenbreit realized it would still be a number of years before there was full capacity going through the program, so the government developed a program for international medical grads to encourage international physicians to come to Saskatchewan while they shored up the Saskatchewan numbers.
Under the former NDP government “there were seven countries that we were accepting applicants from,” said Ottenbreit. As well, policies were onerous in bringing new physicians in.
There was also a low retention rate in the rural areas, so a made-in-Saskatchewan policy was needed, said Ottenbreit, and that resulted in creation of the Saskatchewan International Physician Practice Assessment program. It opened Saskatchewan up to physicians from a wider range of countries than before. Those recruits have to fit with Canadian standards of medical training and there is a wide range of assessment that they go through.
Also created was SaskDocs, the agency that recruits internationally and also helps prepare doctors for placement in the province.
“We found that those two programs really have positive results. We are finding higher success rates in graduating those doctors coming to the province. We’re having about 92 per cent of those staying in the province, those international doctors that are coming through the SIPPA program, and out of those 92 per cent the majority, or 96 per cent, of those are staying in rural areas.”
The Rural Family Physician Incentive Program was also crediting for providing recent grads over $120,000 over five years if they set up their practice in a community under 10,000 population.
Also credited was the training of more family medicine residents in sites outside Saskatoon and Regina. In North Battleford that training is happening at the Primary Health Centre in the Frontier Mall, and there was also training happening in Prince Albert, Swift Current, La Ronge and Moose Jaw.
“We found that training them in rural areas, we’ve found we’re having more success in them staying in rural areas,” said Ottenbreit.
He pointed to success coming out of the Prince Albert program in particular with 82 per cent of grads staying in Saskatchewan.
Other initiatives included the Physician Rural Externship Program to provide medical students with an opportunity to gain work experience outside Regina or Saskatoon. And there is also a rural physician locum pool to provide additional physician coverage and assistance to rural family physicians.
