KIPLING — Doctor retention is an issue facing many rural communities across Saskatchewan, something the communities of Kipling and Broadview have especially been experiencing through recent years.
Despite best efforts to entice physicians to stay, it seems difficult to keep doctors in a community long term. Recently, members of the Kipling and District Health Foundation and the Broadview Hospital Reopen Committee met to brainstorm a solution to this problem affecting their communities.
“Health care is not a municipal task,” said Kipling Mayor Pat Jackson. “It’s not in our basket, but we also know that the provincial governments all over are doing a lot of downloading, and so we end up taking on more and doing more with less.”
She attended the meeting, which initially was something Mayor Jackson saw as an attempt to keep lines of communication open and to explore ways in which hospitals in Kipling and Broadview might be able to assist each other.
“Broadview’s Reopen Committee presented to the Kipling representatives more about becoming our own little pod,” explained Broadview Mayor Colleen Umperville, who also sits on the Broadview Hospital Reopen Committee.
“Doctors are demanding that they, of course, have an outside of the hospital life. When you get down to fewer doctors, they’re on call for your emergency room a lot, and so they’re wanting quality of life. Our thoughts were — and it’s been talked about with our district manager as well — that if we became a pod [with] three doctors in Broadview, three doctors in Kipling and even if Grenfell had a doctor, they could come into it as well — and just as the virtual doctor works, if a patient goes into Kipling hospital, and the doctors aren’t on call, but the doctor in Broadview is, then they would contact using that virtual method and vice versa. So the six doctors really would be working together, and have a little more chance of knowing the other staff, because I think virtual doctors, that is a challenge for them, knowing the RNs that they’re talking to, who they are, how they react, just being able to trust them. When you work with staff in a smaller area, that trust develops a lot faster.”
Currently, the Kipling Integrated Health Centre has one doctor, an advanced authorized nurse, and the virtual physician program to serve those with health needs in the area. Mayor Jackson noted there are two more physicians on the way, coming to Kipling in July.
During the June 9 meeting of Kipling Town Council, Mayor Jackson explained how a possible scenario of resource sharing between the two communities would see doctors on fewer on-call commitments. In a full complement where both hospitals have three doctors each, an on-call rotation would lessen the on-call stress.
“If this comes to fruition, it’s probably three to four years down the road,” Mayor Jackson told those gathered at the council table. “I have no idea whether it will. I know there has been a request from that group in Broadview to come to the Hospital Foundation meeting and present to them as well.”
The general plan could also work with less than the target of six physicians as Mayor Umperville pointed out.
“Neither of us are in the situation where we for sure have three doctors, but even if we ended up with four — two each — that kind of system would still be a benefit and maybe supported even more with the virtual doctor that Saskatchewan Health Authority has up and running,” she told the World-Spectator. “To me, it’s nothing but positives. It stabilizes both communities. Even if a doctor leaves, you’ve still got the doctors from the other community that fill in gaps.”
The Broadview Hospital Reopen Committee formed in response to acute care beds and emergency rooms being closed, plus lab services significantly being reduced back in the fall of 2019. The indefinite closure at the Broadview Union Hospital during that time was officially due to the inability to provide reliable and consistent lab/diagnostic and physician services.
“We’ve been working to try to stabilize our hospital,” said Mayor Umperville of the committee. “It started off having troubles. We didn’t have CLXT, which is lab techs and X ray, and despite the fact that the lab tech that retired was in her 40th year. I was surprised that more work hadn’t been done to keep the hospital open.”
The Virtual Physician program was introduced in Broadview at the beginning of 2024 and in Kipling by June of the same year, which was a large help to the doctors in both communities.
“We now have the virtual doctor, and with the two that we have, we’re supposed to get a third starting July 2, so that will really stabilize our hospital,” Mayor Umperville said.
