Beck to hire more permanent doctors and nurses, phase out expensive private travel workers
For immediate release: September 23, 2024
Beck to hire more permanent doctors and nurses, phase out expensive private travel workers
REGINA – Today, Saskatchewan NDP Leader Carla Beck announced her plan to get Saskatchewan out of last place on healthcare by hiring more nurses and more doctors.
“Public healthcare was born right here in Saskatchewan, but our system has been driven into chaos by Scott Moe and the Sask. Party,” said Beck. “Families deserve care when and where they need it, and that’s what a Saskatchewan NDP government intends to deliver.”
A Saskatchewan NDP government will train, retain, and hire more doctors, nurses, and specialists in the public system. That means investing $1.1 billion in critical frontline services, implementing a strategy to keep doctors and nurses working in Saskatchewan and listening to local voices and experts about how the system should work and where it’s failing.
“The Sask. Party has not hired enough doctors and nurses, plain and simple. We’re losing out to other provinces. We don’t have enough frontline workers to serve our population. We need to staff up and then we need to keep them here.”
As of this weekend, the provincial government’s career page had 1,100 vacant healthcare job postings but less than half are full-time. Beck’s plan will also upgrade part-time positions to full-time to enable Saskatchewan to recruit and retain more healthcare workers and help phase out expensive out-of-province contractors.
Saskatchewan healthcare workers say that out-of-province contractors are taking their shifts and getting paid triple the normal rate, weakening morale in our hospitals, all while incremental services provided by the private sector are costing 10X the public sector cost.
According to the Canadian Institute of Health Information, Saskatchewan is last place in Canada for surgical wait times and last place for healthcare worker retention. Rural registered nurses have declined 21% since Scott Moe took office, from 2,234 in 2018 to 1,760 in this year’s report.
“We will make sure healthcare decisions are made in the best interest of patients, not politicians. A Saskatchewan NDP government will make sure every person in our province has timely access to healthcare and that every person can get emergency care when they need it.”
Part of the plan announced by Beck includes developing new outlets to ensure healthcare workers are at the table where decisions are being made so that boots on the ground can bring their expertise into improving public healthcare. This includes a Nursing Task Force which has been a top ask for the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses for over a year.
“Healthcare workers have been through so much taking care of us, and we need to take care of them so we can all improve public healthcare in the great province where it started.”
Beck kicked off her campaign for change earlier this month with a guarantee to not raise taxes and will soon release a fully-costed platform that balances the budget in her first term.
