HEALTH CARE IN SASK.
Our chat with the minister
Just over eight months ago, health care underwent monumental changes as 12 health regions amalgamated into the Saskatchewan Health Authority. Leader-post reporter Pamela Cowan recently spoke with Health Minister Jim Reiter about how services have evolved since the changeover.
Q What has gone well with restructuring health care in the province and what hasn’t?
A The things that have gone well is the senior management recruitment. There’s a management structure put in place — it’s called a dyad model — and it’s where physician leaders are working with the administrative people ... This dyad system so far is showing great potential ... As far as things not going well, there isn’t one thing that jumps out at me. My biggest concern, to a large extent, is I’m not the most patient guy in the world and I wish things were advanced further than they are, that we were operating entirely as one system and it’s not there yet.
Q How is the province spending federal funding earmarked for mental health and home care?
A We’re in the process of hiring 40 FTES (full-time equivalents) for the Community Recovery Teams — it’s a multidisciplinary approach that we’re putting in eight communities around the province. We’re also expanding the PACT (Police and Crisis) teams into North Battleford, Moose Jaw and Yorkton. They’ve been highly successful in Saskatoon and Regina ... Those are just examples of what we’re in the process of doing right now, but you’re going to see increased funding on mental health and addictions in next year’s budget. Exactly where that money is going to be spent, we’re working on that.
Q A Regina mother whose son died in January as a result of a fentanyl overdose wants the province to start addressing the opioid crisis in terms of treatment beds and listen to families when making improvements. What is being done?
A The issue with the opioid crisis is hugely important and we need to get a handle on that somehow. Obviously dealing with addictions, if that means more beds we need to figure out a way to deliver that. If it makes sense to be funding (communitybased organizations) instead of creating it in government, we’re certainly going to consider that.
Q The provincial auditor flagged concerns in her 2017 report about ehealth’s disaster recovery plan testing not being complete. As of March 31, 2017, ehealth had created detailed recovery plans for four of its 39 critical IT systems, but no further progress has been made. Where are things at?
A I was extremely disappointed to see that. Right now, our deputy minister of health is acting as the interim CEO there and the board is in the process of recruiting somebody, but I’ve asked him to make this a priority. I know they’ve been working on it. I’m going to be getting follow-ups with him regularly, but obviously we need to do better.
Q What’s happening with EMS services across the province now that health region boundaries have been removed?
A Right now, it’s kind of business as usual for ambulance services, but the SHA is working so it becomes very consistent and it’s the first available ambulance responds to an emergency call and that will be a priority. That’s continuing to be worked on, but it’s not there yet.
Q A request for proposals
(RFP) recently closed for bids for publicly funded community -based CT and MRI scans in Regina and MRI scans in Saskatoon. If the Saskatoon provider is willing to provide private-pay MRIS, will that be the direction going forward?
A If whoever the successful applicant is for the RFP, if they decide to, they can apply for a licence to offer the private-pay, the two-for-ones as well.
Q How are private-pay MRIS working out?
A Pretty good. People who have chosen to use that option obviously come out of the public queue and the provider is required to take someone else out of the public queue, so we’re helping there. We’re kind of disappointed in the federal government’s approach to this. For a lot of years, other provinces — you look to the west, Alberta had just been merely allowing private pay. We thought this was sort of a very reasonable middle ground. It helps the public system and it allows people with the financial means to purchase theirs. As of now, the federal government isn’t showing much willingness to at least let us make our case
... There’s been no clawbacks on the Canada Health transfers on it yet, but there’s certainly been the threat of it.
Q Have emergency department waits improved in the province in the past year?
A I think we’re seeing some improvement after some disappointing results, but having said that, we still need to do better.
Q It was anticipated between $10 and $20 million in savings would be achieved in the first operational year of the SHA — what’s the bottom line at this point?
A We’re close to $10 million. When we were estimating those savings, just roughly half of that was through governance and senior management savings and half of it through IT savings. I would say that the governance and senior management is already paying off. We think the IT savings will still be coming, but by and large we’re on track. The savings are important, but the primary driver was consistency and service delivery and acting as one unit across the province.