For immediate release: October 15, 2024
Beck Commits To Reducing Healthcare Turnover By Half, Hiring 800 New Frontline Workers To End Saskatchewan’s Healthcare Crisis
Over 4,000 staff left Saskatchewan healthcare over the last year with Scott Moe and the Sask. Party in charge
REGINA – Saskatchewan NDP Leader Carla Beck promised help is on the way for Saskatchewan’s overwhelmed hospitals, pledging to retain thousands of frontline healthcare workers and to hire hundreds more to drastically improve patient care.
“We don’t have to settle — we can vote for better healthcare,” Beck said. “We can respect and support the people doing courageous work in our hospitals and we can recruit more people to help. It’s time for change.”
Beck has committed to a $1.1 billion investment in healthcare in the Saskatchewan NDP’s fully-costed election platform. The majority of that funding will be dedicated to hiring more healthcare workers, improving working conditions, and ending the culture of fear among doctors, nurses and other professionals working in hospitals and clinics.
Last year, more than 4,000 staff left the Saskatchewan healthcare workforce, prompting emergency room closures, service blackouts and, in the most severe cases, patients dying before receiving any care.
Beck committed that a Saskatchewan NDP Government will reduce healthcare workforce turnover by half and hire 800 new frontline workers into positions where they will have the greatest immediate impact.
“What we’re talking about is thousands more frontline nurses, doctors and other dedicated professionals in our hospitals ready and supported to provide care for the people of Saskatchewan,” Beck said. “Saskatchewan healthcare is in last place because Scott Moe and the Sask. Party put us there. But that’s a choice. We can make a different choice — to change the government and focus from Day 1 on delivering better healthcare.”
Over the weekend, a memo was leaked to the Saskatchewan NDP detailing several medical service blackouts at Regina’s two major hospitals. The blackouts, in the worst-case scenario, could be life-threatening, according to physicians consulted about the memo.
Emergency rooms in Saskatoon have reported being at two or three times capacity in recent weeks and frontline staff have described a horrific situation as they ran out of critical medical supplies, like oxygen and stretchers, and were forced to leave bedridden patients in hospital hallways for days.
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