Podiatry cuts will cost Saskatchewan

Podiatry services in Saskatchewan have been terminated as of July 1 due to budget constraints, along with other services. In Saskatoon, that means 4,000 patients, of which I was one, lose quality health care services for their feet.

Diabetics beware, as this will directly affect you. Seniors, too. Many patients were elderly and on fixed incomes, and this affects them as well.

Private podiatrists will charge double to triple what we were charged through podiatry services, but the biggest cost is yet to come in the quality of patient lives and cost to the health care system.

Now you have to be referred to the expensive and hard to get tertiary care centres in Saskatoon and Prince Albert. This is fine if you are in those two cities. I was a patient rep on the lower extremity wound pathway with the LEAN initiative, and all signs pointed to focus on tertiary care versus using podiatrists in wound care diagnoses and management.

Cutting off your toe to save your foot may work in foot care, but I think we are saving on band-aids while paying for it later through increased costs and surgeries and loss of body parts and loss of people being ambulatory.

Total cost of this program provincially is $1.41 million. I would rather have seen higher patient fees than cutting this program completely.

Talk about not leaving health care recipients with a leg to stand on.

Alan Chant, Saskatoon