Patients wait for hours at a Warman, Sask. walk-in clinic. Now the city is losing another family doctor

Legends Medical Clinic starts taking walk-ins at 9 a.m. CST.  By 9:20 a.m Thursday, the expected wait was already more than three hours. 

Legends is one of few walk-ins clinic in Warman, Sask., a city about 15 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon.

Dr. Marcel Smit, one of two doctors at the private facility looking after walk-in patients, said he usually sees 45 to 50 people a day.

The physician credits a lack of primary care doctors in the city for his extended workload.

Warman is one of the fastest growing cities in Saskatchewan. It’s home to about 12,400 people, up from 4,800 in 2006.

Warman has struggled to keep family doctors for years. In 2016, four of the five family doctors in the city at the time left. 

Now one of the city’s few remaining doctors is leaving in the new year. Legends will then be the only clinic offering walk-in hours in Warman.

“The waits are going to become longer, patients are going to be more frustrated, which in turn makes it a tougher day at the office for us,” Smit said.

Concerns about care

Today, there are no family doctors taking on new patients in Warman. 

“It’s very concerning. The number 1 thing is the patient’s care isn’t adequate,” Smit said.

He said around 60 per cent of the patients he sees in a day don’t have a family doctor.

Noha Aziz and her three children have spent many hours at Legends because they haven’t had a family doctor in more a year. 

She hasn’t looked elsewhere for a new one.

“We live in Warman, we want something close to here,” Aziz said. 

She said the family will sometimes go to a hospital in nearby Saskatoon if needed.

Increased stress

Smit said the lack of family doctors in Warman is leading to a cycle of burnout among the physicians who are still there.

“Doctors begin to work less, they leave, we’ve had some doctors quit walk-ins because they physically can’t keep up with their own patients and the burden of walk-in,” Dr. Smit said. “That in turn makes it more difficult for other doctors, which leads to more burnout.”

Legends Medical Clinic shut its doors temporarily in mid-October because of physician shortages and verbal abuse from patients. It stayed closed for almost two weeks.

WATCH| Doctor shortage in Saskatchewan means many patients are turning to walk-in clinics:

Doctor shortage in Saskatchewan means many patients are turning to walk-in clinics

There’s a shortage of family doctors in Saskatchewan and that is increasing demand at walk-in clinics.

The family doctor shortage is a provincewide issue, according to Dr. Andries Muller, president of the Saskatchewan College of Family Physicians.

“We definitely know that many physician have stopped the practice or have the left the province,” Dr. Muller said.

“What happens then is that there’s an increased burden on the physicians who are left behind. Not only are there a number of people who do not have a family physician, but now those who are lucky to have one find it harder and harder to get to the appointments.”

Smit said the lack of family doctors leads to increased burden on walk-in clinics and emergency rooms across the province.

He said some of the overflow could be fixed by increased investment in primary care.

“If we have more doctors, primary care would be better,” Dr. Smit said. “People would have better care, hopefully less people get sick and then people would have to go to the hospital less often as well.”

In September, the Saskatchewan government unveiled a plan to hire and retain more health-care professionals.

The province says it aims to bring in roughly 1,000 more physicians, nurses and other health-care support staff to fill vacancies.

In October, Health Minister Paul Merriman said the province had been able to recruit 107 doctors in the previous 12 months, which he said worked out to a net increase of 40 doctors over that time period.