In the last five years, Sun Country Health Region has come a long way, in terms of how many practicing physicians it now offers within its territory. The region has implemented a successful recruitment strategy, pushing the number of physicians from a 50 per cent overall vacancy with intermittent critical shortages in parts of the region, to ideal numbers of physicians practising in every part of the region.
“There was a critical shortage in Estevan, where there actually was one summer where we had to look to other doctors, helping with on-call coverage in Estevan,” said Marga Cugnet, CEO of Sun Country Health Region. “We were down a few years, but there were five or six physicians that were only available for on-call duty. There were patients going to Weyburn, because they couldn’t access a family physician in Estevan in a timely fashion.”
A year later, in Weyburn, things got even more dire, when there were so few doctors that Sun Country almost needed to close the emergency room.
Cugnet stated Sun Country has officially recruited physicians into all the necessary positions, but also noted that doctors come and go, and positions inevitably open up again with time.
That being said, Sun Country has a process in place by which open positions left by departing physicians are filled more easily and efficiently. The number of physicians practising in Estevan is now officially at a preferred number, with the addition of Doctor Mona Ali, who started in September.
“We’re replacing physicians in a more timely fashion. It used to be every one to two years if we were lucky enough to get a doctor,” said Cugnet, “Now, with various processes in place, it’s much easier to bring physicians, particularly in some of those vacant areas that are coming up.”
The success of Sun Country’s recruitment strategy was due to the work of the Physician Recruitment Agency of Saskatchewan (Saskdocs), in tandem with a strategy implemented by Sun Country: an enhanced recruitment department effort. While Saskdocs took measures of its own, provincewide, to increase the number of trained physicians staying in and moving to Saskatchewan, Sun Country hired on an employee specifically tasked with physician recruitment into the region.
Sun Country also implemented a physician bursary program offering up to $100,000 to students who enter into a return-for-service agreement requiring them to stay up to four years in a specific part of the region.
Another method the region used to recruit was the Saskatchewan International Physician Assessment program (SIPA), a program that allows for assessment of the eligibility of internationally educated physicians. This offered the region a wider pool of talent from which to draw, and helped the region fill positions more easily. To date, Sun Country has one international physician who has returned to the region and two that plan on returning next spring.
“It does come and go. Right now, I would say we have one vacancy in Radville,” said Cugnet. “We had three doctors out there before, and now are down to two.”
While things are looking good, Cugnet noted that Sun Country is always on the lookout for physicians who have specialized skills in a particular area of medicine.
“We’re looking to see if we can find family physicians who have additional skills,” Cugnet said. “A general physician with anesthesia skill, or a physician who is an obstetrician-gynecologist. We ask ourselves ‘Do we have someone who can do cesarean sections and obstetrical work?’”
Cugnet noted that major changes are in store for Weyburn, which also has an ideal number of physicians. Three of the four internationally educated physicians working in the city’s primary health clinic plan to relocate back to their home communities.
Sun Country’s successful recruitment continues, with three physicians already hired to replace the ones who plan to leave —one of whom will be arriving in January, and another in May.
Cugnet said, “We’re sort of ahead of the game now, rather than behind it.”
