Feds providing Saskatchewan with $560M in health-care funding

Saskatchewan is getting $560 million in federal funding to improve health care in the province.

On Monday in Regina, the federal and provincial governments announced they had signed two bilateral agreements — one for $391 million over three years to support Saskatchewan’s plan to improve its health-care system, and one for $169.3 million over five years to support the province’s plan to help residents age with dignity close to home.

“It’s important and it will make a significant impact. Being able to partner with the federal government for these additional dollars, it means being able to do projects like this one here behind us,” Saskatchewan Health Minister Everett Hindley said, standing in front of the soon-to-open Regina Urgent Care Centre.

“It means being able to, as the federal minister talked about, modernizing our health-care system, which is something that we talk about as politicians, and trying to make the system easier for patients to navigate.”

Saskatchewan has been trying to add to its health-care workforce through the Health Human Resources Action Plan. A number of communities have been dealing with closures at their facilities due to a shortage of health-care workers, while hospitals have been declared fire hazards due to overcrowding.

“If we’re going to take on the challenges that exist in health, we have to be dealing with the health workforce crisis right now. This agreement does exactly that. We have to be able to make sure that that person who needs care is able to get the care, that they have a relationship with a family doctor, that they can walk into a clinic and they can be seen,” said federal Health Minister Mark Holland.

He talked about wanting to make Canada’s health-care system the best in the world.

“You can’t just pick one area of health; you have to come at it from every single direction,” he said. “That’s daunting, but I think the challenge should be, can we demonstrate progress every single day, in every aspect of our health system, and is squarely in our hearts, in the intention of everything we do, making things better.”

Hindley said the money is expected to support, expand and expedite work that is already happening in Saskatchewan, and could lead to more initiatives.

“(We’re) really looking outside the box to find ways to reinvent what we’re doing when it comes to health care: Taking the best parts of the health-care system that we currently have and making it better,” said Hindley.

He said there would be some federal expectations on what the money will fund.

This money is part of the suite of health-care funding announced by the federal government in February of nearly $200 billion over the next 10 years.

Funding in the first agreement is expected to:

• Improve access to family health services and acute and urgent care by supporting a Saskatchewan family physician payment model, expanding Saskatoon’s Chronic Pain Clinic, growing the Virtual Triage Physician program through Healthline 8-1-1, and creating new permanent acute care and complex care beds in Regina and Saskatoon hospitals to reduce overcapacity;
• Support the health workforce and help reduce backlogs through the recruitment of new health-care workers, retention incentives for hard-to-recruit positions, and increasing clinical placements to support the expansion of 550 post-secondary training seats;
• Expand the delivery of culturally appropriate mental health and substance use support and specialized care through overdose outreach teams, the continued expansion of Police and Crisis Teams, increasing addiction treatment spaces and rapid grief counselling by Family Services Saskatchewan and supporting youth facing mental health and addiction challenges; and
• Modernize health-care systems with health data and digital tools by continuing investments in eHealth and health sector information technology.

The second lump of funding, through the Aging with Dignity agreement, is designed to:

• Enhance home and community care services through expanding Community Health Centres, outreach services and advancing the Patient Medical Home Model pilot;
• Improve palliative care by supporting training for health workers in end-of-life care and increasing the number of health professionals to help patients and support palliative care; and
• Strengthen the quality of long-term care and home care services by increasing the number of frontline care and continuing care providers and improving compliance with long-term care standards through inspections and follow-ups.

“We are committed to providing quality health services and programs to support our seniors to live safely and comfortably in their homes and communities,” Tim McLeod, the province’s minister of mental health and addictions, seniors and rural and remote health, said in a media release.

“Federal funding in Saskatchewan’s Aging with Dignity agreement will contribute to achieving this goal through improved long-term and palliative care, and enhanced home and community care.”

The governments also say they plan to work with Indigenous partners to support improved access to quality and culturally appropriate health care services.

— With files from 980 CJME’s Lisa Schick