The Saskatchewan Medical Association held its Fall Representative Assembly Friday, virtually, and Saskatchewan doctors had the opportunity to directly question cabinet ministers responsible for health care in the province.

Questions ranged from staffing and recruitment of nurses, to address underlying issues such as obesity and poverty which exacerbate the condition of those who become ill and a mechanism being implemented so health care workers can report anonymously when they witness fraud in connection to the vaccination rollout.

Saskatoon doctor Carla Holinaty asked the province to set up an anonymous whistleblower system when she had a chance to address the Health Minister Friday.

Dr. Holinaty says they are seeing fraud in the system with people saying they are seeing stacks of vaccine cards being stolen, then falsely filled out, and sold. Or private vaccine test providers offering to sell fraudulent results.

She says when others in the health care system become aware of these issues, people are afraid of reporting them because they can’t do so anonymously

“With things like at the Yorkton hospital with the threatening posters, I think people are, rightly afraid of retribution from the anti-vaccine camp.”

Minister Merriman says they can call his office confidentially but government officials will set up something either through the Ministry of Health or Saskatchewan Health Authority for health care workers to report anonymously. Merriman says he has “zero tolerance for that kind of stupidity.”

Dr. Alan Beggs, an Orthapaedic Surgeon in Regina, says even if they get restoration of the entirety of nursing staff in surgical units, day surgery, recovery units and so on, the needs and depth of nursing staff is still inadequate to anything approaching previous surgical levels and he says that issue needs to be a significant focus of government

Dr. Beggs wants to know how the government is going to upgrade recruitment to make up for the pre-existing shortfalls in operative nursing resources prior to the pandemic.

He says, “We no capacity to meet our past levels of surgery never mind the predicted upscaling of surgery coming up as we try to work our way out of this huge weightless hole.”

He also asked Health Minister Paul Merriman where the 80 per cent, plus, surgeries completed during the pandemic was sourced from. Dr. Beggs says none of the surgeons in Regina he works with have come close to 80 per cent of pre-pandemic productivity.

In response to nursing shortfalls, Merriman says they are recruiting outside of the province and outside the country, as well as exploring costs behind having more seats in University for nursing and as to where he got the surgical completion numbers, the Health Minister says they were sourced from the Saskatchewan Health Authority.