Saskatchewan forms advisory committee on primary care, will consider family patient registry

The committee came after the Sask. College of Family Physicians, which represents about 1,600 physicians across the province, launched a petition in January this year aiming to learn how many people are struggling to find a family doctor in the province.

“People who don’t currently have a family physician or primary-care provider were really struggling with the time that it was taking them to find one,” McGonigle explained.

She said the organization was hearing stories of people keeping lists of doctors’ offices to call regularly, taking time out of their day in the hope that an opening would arise.

“There is no place where people can go to find out this information centrally,” said McGoningle. “Likewise, family doctors’ offices were complaining that they’re fielding, you know, tens, hundreds of these calls a week (from) desperate folks looking for a primary-care provider.”

McGonigle said the long, often fruitless searches take an emotional toll on residents, and also on employees at doctors’ offices who have to repeatedly turn potential patients down due to capacity restraints.

“We really felt that it was important for people’s voices to be heard, and wanted the government to kind of take some action on developing a registry,” she said.

Such a registry, McGonigle explained, would have two sides – a patient registry, allowing people in need of a primary-care provider to identify themselves and a practitioner registry showing the capacity of family physicians, nurse practitioners and primary-care teams to take on new patients.

Several provinces already have similar registries in place.

“The idea is that then these can be matched, and we can kind of get people on the patient side connected with appropriate primary-care providers in a timely fashion when possible,” McGonigle said.

In an emailed statement, the Saskatchewan Ministry of Health said the provincial government has committed to every resident in the province having access to a primary-care provider by the end of 2028.

“The Ministry of Health is aiming to achieve this goal through partnership and collaboration with our health-care providers and stakeholders,” the ministry said.

The ministry also confirmed that a provincial advisory committee has been established, including representation from the Saskatchewan Health Authority, the Saskatchewan Medical Association, the Saskatchewan Association of Nurse Practitioners, the Saskatchewan Healthcare Recruitment Agency, the Health Quality Council, 3SHealth, the College of Medicine, the Saskatchewan College of Family Physicians, eHealth, Patient & Family Partners and the ministry itself.

“This committee provides advice, recommendations and coordination on improving primary care and ensuring residents have access to the right primary care provider at the right time to address their health needs,” the ministry stated.

It also acknowledged the college’s petition.

“The Ministry and our health sector partners are discussing this idea as part of our on-going work to improve and expand primary care access across the province,” the ministry said.

McGonigle said she’s “certainly hopeful” now that the advisory group has formed. She said many members of the group are enthusiastic and feel that the registry is a “necessary next step, especially to achieve the province’s goal of having everybody in the province connected with primary care by 2028.

“This is one of those tools that will actually be able to make the government accountable for that and say ‘Yes, yes, we do have this,’” McGonigle said.

She said that even when someone has been accepted as a patient by a family doctor, they might face delays in scheduling appointments due to the heavy workloads many family physicians are managing.

“Just because people are attached to a primary-care provider doesn’t always mean that that access is there,” McGonigle said, adding that she is also advocating for increased services and increasing team-based care, in an effort to improve overall access to primary care.

Earlier this year, the province announced it would be hiring more nurse practitioners, expanding its rural physician incentive program and expanding virtual access to physicians.

McGonigle said the registry being proposed would compliment the work the province is doing on these fronts by helping to identify the patients who do not have a primary-care provider. While work is being done to increase the number of family doctors in the province, she said access to virtual care can be “one piece of the puzzle” to help keep patients out of emergency rooms for primary-care needs.

“I’m pleased that they are moving forward on the registry,” McGonigle said. “We’re not at the point where any decisions have been made about the registry. It’s still a work in progress.”

Saskatchewan’s official Opposition also weighed in on the issue.

Sask. NDP leader Carla Beck was quoted in an April 1 statement, comparing finding a family doctor to “scoring concert tickets.”

“People are spending hours calling clinic after clinic, scanning social media, even building spreadsheets to track leads,” Beck said.

In January, a 23-year-old man in Regina took matters into his own hands and created a website aiming to connect people with doctors accepting new patients in Saskatchewan’s capital.

David Nmandi’s website, DocMiyo, offers a list of clinics accepting patients, alongside contact information and details about the types of services each clinic provides.

Previously, the Saskatchewan Health Authority’s website contained a similar registry of clinics, but it was discontinued.

McGonigle said family medicine is an area of care that every person should have access to, for overall wellness and health care, prevention and illness management. Many of the problems “upstream” in Saskatchewan’s health-care system, she said, are worsened by a lack of access to family physicians.

by Libby Gray

Saskatchewan forms advisory committee on primary care, will consider family patient registry

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