No help from government for Saskatoon family's health-care travel

Their 2 1/2-year-old is very sick and often in a lot of pain. She needs to see a pediatric gastroenterologist, but there aren't any in Saskatchewan and haven't been any for about a year.

Soron and her husband were at the Legislative Building two weeks ago to ask for help with the travel costs from the health minister, but have now been told "no."

The travel and accommodations for the trip are going to cost thousands for the family, which Soron said is a lot of money for them.

"We're not doing this for fun, and we certainly would rather spend our money in a thousand other ways than going to Toronto when this could have been a 24-hour ordeal here in Saskatchewan where we had the support and help of friends and family," said Soron.

They're looking forward to getting answers about what's wrong with their daughter and finding out how to deal with it, but Soron has had to fight for her little girl every step of the way and she said it's been stressful.

"It's been kind of like banging your head against a wall, really," she said.

The whole reason the Sorons are having to take the more than 2,000-kilometre trip is because they can't get the health care in Saskatchewan; the health authority and provincial government haven't been able to hire any of those specialists. Soron said that means the health authority is not having to pay those salaries.

"So, in my mind, they should be diverting those funds to help families that have to leave the province," she said.

The provincial government will pay for the cost of the health care itself, but not the travel. When asked why that is, Health Minister Everett Hindley said multiple times that it's just the long-standing policy.

"When it comes to medical procedures that aren't provided in province and patients need to be sent out of province or perhaps out of country, that the procedures themselves are covered but travel and accommodations and those sorts of costs are not covered," said Hindley.

Right now, the minister said the health authority and government are working to build capacity in Saskatchewan's health system so fewer people have to go out of province.

"(That's) to make sure that, whenever possible, we can hire the staff and the teams that we need to have here, a multi-disciplinary team to be able to support those specialists so that we can provide those services in province, and thereby make it something they can access here at home," he said.

Hindley couldn't say how many people have had to be sent away recently for care. It has recently been a practice for some pediatric GI patients, breast cancer screenings, and hip and knee surgeries, to name a few.

He also couldn't say whether paying for those people's travel would be prohibitively expensive for the provincial government.

If the ministry were to look at changing the policy, Hindley said it's those kinds of things it'd have to look at.

"How many patients are being sent elsewhere for care in other provinces? What would the associated cost be for travel and accommodations? And how far back do you go? Do you start at a certain date? Do you backdate it at all?" he said.

Hindley said he isn't aware of any change to the policy being considered right now.

In the meantime, Soron is dealing with disappointment and frustration at the government's decision. She said the whole experience of going to the Legislative Building felt impersonal, and in some cases, disrespectful. She said there wasn't much help that came out of it.

"I thought our minister of health was very friendly and very compassionate during our meeting, but to be honest, I'm like, 'Is it just another box that he had to tick off his list?' " said Soron.

More families

The Sorons aren't the only family being turned down by the provincial government for help on health-care travel costs.

The Webers were at the Legislative Building on Wednesday asking for the same thing. Fifteen-year-old Zachary has eosinophilic esophagitis, a chronic condition that makes it difficult for him to eat or even swallow water.

Zachary also has to go to Toronto to see a pediatric GI specialist because there aren't any in Saskatchewan right now.

On Wednesday, in their meeting with the health minister, Hindley said he told them the same thing - that the provincial government doesn't reimburse such travel costs.