Yorkton patient speaks out on city losing four doctors

Struggles in finding family doctors in Sask. WATCH: Four physicians recently left Yorkton, leaving one woman scrambling in the midst of a health issue. Sierra D’Souza Butts reports.

Yorkton, Sask. — A cattle farmer near Yorkton has spoken out about the shortage of doctors in the Yorkton region after losing her family physician in the area.

“We did all of the appropriate measures to make sure that we had a family physician that was going to stick in our area,” shared Angela Prokopetz, who resides about 40 minutes outside of Yorkton.

Prokopetz, who suffers with chronic asthma, said she moved to Saskatchewan from Alberta 15 years ago thinking it would be easier to access health care in the province.

“[My husband and I] both have chronic illnesses that need to be treated consistently. We need diagnostic testing, and we need a coach, a medical care partner,” she expressed.

“In less than a year of securing our most recent physician, he sent us a letter saying that he was leaving and moving out of province.”

After finding out her family doctor would be leaving the city, Prokopetz inquired about getting a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan, but found out the waitlist was about two years long.

“I looked to the private sector. I was told that there would be a six-month wait for a private MRI,” she said.

“As it turned out, I didn’t have to wait quite that long, but the consequences of not being able to wait - because I knew this was a deteriorating situation for me - is I had to dip into my retirement savings and the bill was significant.”

"The bill was much over $1,000 and as luck would have it, I didn't get the results back to my family physician before he left. As a health system orphan, my results came back into the electronic health record.”

In a news release on Monday, Saskatchewan’s NDP stated that, “at least four doctors have left Yorkton in the last six months.”

“People can’t access a family doctor. The Sask. Party is clearly driving healthcare workers out of the province but instead of fixing the problem, they’re spending more time trying to hide it from the public,” Sask. NDP Shadow Minister for Health Vicki Mowat stated in the release.

Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Health said the government is working to address the shortages.

"We have had a number of physicians leave Yorkton over the last few months. Again, when that does happen, we work with the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) to understand why those physicians left and that informs decisions on what recruitment tools we need to have in place, how we staff those individual physician rosters,” said Health Minister Jeremy Cockrill on Monday, at the legislature.

“I did mention in the house today we had a [Saskatchewan International Physician Practice Assessment] SIPPA physician start in Yorkton just last month. I know a couple offers have gone out to family medicine residents for longer term resolutions as well. I’m always happy to look at specifically the small cities and understand what are the tools that we need to be using to make sure we’re fully staffed.”

According to the Saskatchewan Medical Association (SMA), about 200,000 people in province – or one in six – are without a family physician.

“National data shows that Saskatchewan lags most other provinces for the total number of family physicians per 100,000 population and for its specialist-to-population ratio,” SMA’s president Dr. Andre Grobler said in a statement to CTV News.

“The province should set a goal of training and recruiting enough physicians to meet national benchmarks, which would mean 250 net-new family physicians within five years and 275 net-new specialists over the next four years.”

SMA added that Saskatchewan is on the right track for providing a model that focuses on a family physician led, team-based care, for “50 per cent of the province’s residents within five years.”

“Retention and recruitment of physicians to rural and regional centres is critical for our patients to receive care close to home. However, policies to date appear to be losing ground to the reality of rural attrition,” stated Dr. Grobler.

“There is no single or simple answer. It is imperative that the organizations familiar with the issues be brought together to develop more sustainable solutions. The SMA is advocating for a Rural Health Care Task Force to make concrete, actionable, and substantial recommendations to improve the stability of health care services in rural and regional areas.

“We owe it to our patients to make sure physicians have the resources and support they need to do their all-important jobs. Our future health and well-being as a province depend on our ability to retain and recruit physicians to Saskatchewan.”