Uniquely challenged with a small and spread-out rural population, Saskatchewan has historically struggled to recruit and retain physicians in its plucky and kind communities.

However, we applaud Saskatchewan’s attempt to incentivize cradle-to-grave care – in the last couple of years, it started topping up clinic-based family doctors for the number of patients they care for and the number of visits they provide. Combined with complex disease payments, decent retention bonuses, and better than average maternity/paternity financial support, Saskatchewan has made a solid attempt at rectifying its family pay inequities.

Keep going Saskatchewan! Consider paying your family physicians for the time they put into their work, not just how many patients they can bring through the doors of their clinics. We also think Saskatchewan could benefit from some true salary type models for their family physicians, very much like PEI offers, to give choice to physicians and increase their competitiveness in the country.