The Saskatchewan Health Authority needs targeted plans to fill and retain hard-to-recruit healthcare positions. That’s according to the Provincial Auditor’s report released today (Tues). Tara Clemett reports that the SHA anticipates 2,200 staff shortages in these types of positions across the province in the next five years.

The report suggests the SHA’s targeted plans lack consideration of certain areas, such as a variety of sources for finding qualified staff, the social supports needed to encourage people to work in rural and remote communities and then to stay there, and digging in to the root causes of the hard-to-recruit positions to help tailor strategies to fill these positions. Clemett explains that for rural and remote communities some possible enticements could be daycare, housing and a peer support program.

The Provincial Auditor’s recommendations include continually monitoring the success of recruitment plans, assess whether post-secondary training seats from out of province and student clinical placements are successful recruitment strategies, establish a First Nations and Metis recruitment and retention plan, and speak with staff who are leaving to see how they feel about the retention strategies.
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The Provincial Auditor’s Report suggests the Finance Ministry needs improved analysis to help with PST compliance and to focus more on enforcement. Clemett, says as of the end of March, there was $283-million in unpaid PST. PST accounts for around 30 per cent, or over $2-billion annually, of the total provincial tax revenue. The report indicates that in the 2021-22 fiscal year, $10-million in PST was collected by vendors but not reported and paid to the Ministry. That’s compared to $3-million the year previous, and Clemett says there has been no analysis why this amount is changing and whether it requires changes to enforcement activities.

Her recommendations for the Finance Ministry include analyzing trends in non-compliance to help prioritize enforcement activities and setting out time frames for reviewing audits and enforcement activities, and publicly reporting the results. In 2021-22, more than 1,200 audits generated $47-million in PST revenue.

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The Provincial Auditor’s report has some recommendations for the Corrections, Policing and Public Safety about its administrative segregation policy. Tara Clemett reports that inmates are not to be on administrative segregation any more than 15 consecutive days, but in 2021, 13 inmates were segregated for over 15 days and one for 43 days straight. She says the Ministry’s policy around this aligns with good practice, but there are inconsistencies in following them, which can cause unnecessary and prolonged segregation that may negatively affect an inmate’s health and well-being.

The report states that it’s not always the appropriate correctional centre staff who authorize administrative segregation and the daily reviews and healthcare assessments aren’t always completed. As well, nurses are supposed to complete periodic health care assessments to evaluate each inmate’s mental and physical ability to cope with administrative segregation and make recommendations about the inmates placement on segregation, but Clemett says this wasn’t always happening as required.

One of the recommendations from the Provincial Auditor is for the Corrections Ministry to broaden its quality assurance reviews to make sure all key policies are being followed, including appropriately documenting the daily reviews. Clemett notes that a minimum two hours out-of-cell leisure time per day is expected, but she was unable to confirm that because the daily reviews weren’t always documented. One inmate spent 24 days on administrative segregation with only eight daily reviews documented.

Click here for the full report:  2022 Report Volume 2 (Full Report)