Gardens Community Health Centre closing due to lack of doctors

WATCH: A Regina medical clinic designed to keep patients out of emergency rooms will be closing next month. Wayne Mantyka reports.

A Regina medical clinic designed to keep patients out of emergency rooms will close next month.

The Gardens Community Health Centre opened in 2018 with extended hours and a multi-disciplinary team of healthcare professionals.

It was the first of its kind in Saskatchewan, which offered a more comprehensive suite of services than a traditional physician clinic through a partnership with the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA).

However, an inability to recruit doctors is forcing the clinic to cease operations. Seven years after opening, a sign in the window says the clinic will close at the end of November.

The NDP estimate that 5,000 patients will be left without a family doctor.

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“Now the Sask. Party has a choice here today. They can step up and do the right thing and do everything in their power to keep this clinic open in two months time or they can continue to fail Saskatchewan people,” NDP MLA Jared Clarke said during a news conference on Wednesday.

During the 2018 clinic opening ceremony, the government said it would budget $4.3 million in the first year to support the clinic and a senior’s house call team, $3 million would be allocated in subsequent years through the SHA partnership, and 30 positions would be created.

“There are 5,000 patients that we have heard at this clinic who are losing their family doctor. That is adding on to the 200,000 people in this province who don’t currently have a family doctor and that means that people are going to now end up in urgent care centres, they are going to end up at emergency rooms,” Clarke said.

The SHA says programs it offered in conjunction with the clinic will continue from a yet to be determined location, with three staff being retained. The seniors house call program was relocated and renamed during the pandemic.

The clinic declined further comment.