Province touts progress on health recruitment plan

The provincial government says it’s making good progress on its Health Human Resources Action Plan, which aims to add 1,000 new people to Saskatchewan’s health-care workforce.

While Saskatchewan is still seeing shortages of doctors and other health-care workers in many parts of the province, Health Minister Everett Hindley said he’s happy to see progress on the plan after the government invested $141 million into the plan in the recent provincial budget.

“I am pleased to see steady progress being made on multiple initiatives to recruit, train, incentivize and retain more health professionals, strengthen health-care teams and deliver improved patient care to residents in communities across the province,” Hindley said in a statement Thursday.

The additional funds are supporting a number of new initiatives in the plan, including an incentive package for anesthesiologists offering $200,000 for five years of work in a regional community and $100,000 for five years of work in an urban area. Similar incentives are being offered for psychiatrists and breast and interventional radiology physicians.

To date, the government said 118 incentive applications for rural physicians have been approved.

When it comes to training, the Ministry of Health said funding in the budget will support 66 new seats in training programs for registered nurses, registered psychiatric nurses and more.

“Also, four new health training programs will be added in Saskatchewan: Occupational Therapy, Speech Language Pathology, Physician Assistant and Respiratory Therapy,” the ministry noted.

The funding will also support additional seats at the College of Medicine and for postgraduate residents, and a new incentive will be created “encouraging students enrolled in health-care training programs in other provinces where Saskatchewan has invested in specific training seats to come home.”

The budget investments include $33.8 million to help stabilize the staffing situation in rural and remote areas. That includes $8.7 million for the Rural and Remote Recruitment Incentive, which the ministry said has already paid out 305 incentives.

Eight more seats will also be added to the Saskatchewan International Physician Program to supplement the 45 existing seats. The program helps attract doctors to rural, remote and northern areas, and the provincial government said more than 300 doctors are currently working in Saskatchewan thanks to the program.

When it comes to nursing, the government has been working hard to attract workers from the Philippines and other countries, and 135 Filipino health professionals – largely nurses – are now working in the province.

In addition, the ministry said 1,097 nursing grads have been hired from within and outside of Saskatchewan since December of 2022.