Saskatchewan Establishes Provincial Advisory Committee to Tackle Primary Care Access, Considers Patient Attachment Registry
Key Insights
Saskatchewan's Ministry of Health has formed a provincial advisory committee to improve primary care access, with a patient attachment registry under active consideration.
Approximately one in six Saskatchewan residents currently lacks access to a family physician, according to the Saskatchewan College of Family Physicians (search).
The proposed two-sided registry would match patients without a primary-care provider to family physicians, nurse practitioners, and primary-care teams with capacity.
Saskatchewan's Ministry of Health has established a provincial advisory committee charged with improving primary care access across the province, with a patient attachment registry emerging as a key proposal under consideration. The committee brings together representatives 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 (search), eHealth, Patient & Family Partners, and the ministry itself.
The initiative follows a petition launched in January by the Saskatchewan College of Family Physicians (search), which represents approximately 1,600 physicians across the province, aiming to quantify how many residents are struggling to find a family doctor.
The Scale of the Access Gap
Darcie McGonigle, family doctor and president of the Saskatchewan College of Family Physicians (search), who serves on the advisory committee, estimated that about one in six people in the province does not have access to a family physician, describing the gap as "fairly significant."
"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 noted that 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 McGonigle. "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."
The long, often fruitless searches take an emotional toll on residents, McGonigle added, and also on employees at doctors' offices who have to repeatedly turn potential patients down due to capacity restraints.
The Proposed Patient Attachment Registry
The registry under discussion would feature two components: a patient registry allowing individuals 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 other Canadian 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.
Government Commitment and Broader Strategy
In an emailed statement, the Saskatchewan Ministry of Health (search) confirmed 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 stated.
The ministry described the committee's role as providing "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."
McGonigle expressed cautious optimism about the advisory group's formation, noting that many members are enthusiastic and view the registry as 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.
Ongoing Challenges and Complementary Measures
McGonigle cautioned that even when patients are formally attached to a primary-care provider, access barriers may persist. "Just because people are attached to a primary-care provider doesn't always mean that access is there," she said, citing heavy workloads among family physicians. She is also advocating for increased services and expanded team-based care.
Earlier this year, the province announced complementary measures including hiring more nurse practitioners, expanding its rural physician incentive program, and broadening virtual access to physicians. McGonigle described virtual care as "one piece of the puzzle" to help keep patients out of emergency rooms for primary-care needs.
The registry remains a work in progress. "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 has also weighed in. Sask. NDP leader Carla Beck, in an April 1 statement, compared finding a family doctor to "scoring concert tickets," noting that "people are spending hours calling clinic after clinic, scanning social media, even building spreadsheets to track leads."
McGonigle emphasized that family medicine is an area of care every person should have access to, for overall wellness, prevention, and illness management, and that many problems "upstream" in Saskatchewan's health-care system are worsened by a lack of access to family physicians.