Six new health care providers coming to Moosomin
Province adds positions to support physicians as part of Patient Medical Home program
March 30, 2026, 9:12 am
Ashley Bochek
The provincial government announced six new positions for medical professionals in Moosomin to support the Moosomin Family Practice Centre. Positions are being added across the province as part of the Patient Medical Home initiative.
The Patient Medical Home Project is about offering a variety of health care services to patients within a clinic, making the clinic the patient’s medical home for a variety fo health care services..
Moosomin’s Dr. Ross Kerkhoff says the additional funding for new hires will aid support the local physicians and provide more care services to patients.
“It is to improve efficiencies in our health care system,” he says. “There is a growing emphasis on primary health care networks and team-based care, so the family practice is working closely with the SHA to develop this Patient Medical Home to enhance the health care services in our region.
“The Patient Medical Home project has 10 pillars that are necessary for its success, many of which the practice has been able to do over the years in providing comprehensive health care services in Moosomin and our clinics as well as key care services at the Southeast Integrated Care Centre.
The foundations are in place, and in order to meet these deliverables on this Patient Medical Home—improving functions, ongoing development and to enhance the comprehensive services already provided by the Moosomin Family Practice—the SHA is hiring additional health care providers, including registered nurses, dietician, pharmacist, and social workers to support and work directly with the providers at the family practice and primary health care clinic at the Southeast Integrated Care Centre. Essentially, they are employees that are going to be working with the practices to provide these extra services.”
Kerkhoff explains physicians in Moosomin have been working toward this project for some time.
“As a physician group, we work as a team. I am the physician lead alongside my colleagues Dr. Fraser Woodside and Dr. Cara Fallis. The three of us are the physician leads in this project and are supported by Dr. van der Merwe who is a representative in the provincial Southeast Saskatchewan affairs, as well as Dr. Wessel Roets who is representative for the region, and we have been trying to formulate this Patient Medical Home Project for some time.
“We’ve actually been able to do most of the deliverables over the years, but the issues that we’ve encountered are maintaining health care providers which is quite common in most rural practices and a lot of primary care practices in the country. In order to provide timely, accessible care, and enhance preventative care, we feel the need to get these extra support staff. Our success has been based on the fact that we work as a team and alongside the auxiliary health care providers, including nurses, pharmacists, health practitioners, etc.
“So this will enhance that and go further, and our goal is to improve access to care across all our locations, strengthen our interdisciplinary team-based service delivery with all of the providers working together, improve preventative care through disease management, reduce our ER wait times and our inpatient hospital stays, enhance continuity of care across clinic, hospital, long-term care, and assisted-living, ensure services remain responsive to community needs, and demographic changes.
“Then, a big thing for us is to advance clinical training, educational, and clinical development so then we can help train the next generation of health care providers to help maintain our current health services in Moosomin and Southeast Saskatchewan.”
Community initiative
Kerkhoff says community leaders tirelessly advocate for the family physicians in Moosomin.
“We are pleased and grateful for the support not just from government, but from the community. I think it is worth acknowledging the late Mayor Larry Tomlinson as well as Bill MacPherson who have been great advocates for health care in our region, and that is being taken further with the current Mayor Murray Gray as well as the board members of the Southeast Municipal Health Care Corporation and the Health Care Foundation. It is a community initiative, and we are all glad it is coming to formation,” he said.
“We are the central hub in Southeast Saskatchewan, so there has been stability for 20-plus years. We started with three health care providers and now there are 12. We have now eight satellite clinics, so it is a matter of maintaining that stability in numbers. It helps with health care services not just in Moosomin but in our greater southeast area.”
He explains the project will bring new physicians to the community and area. “It will be enhancing what is already in place and maintaining what is already in place so that this area and Moosomin can be an attractive place for new recruits and new health care providers to come work and stay.
“We are putting up posters in our clinics to announce this Patient Medical Home, what it means for the patients and what the goals are. It is based on a comprehensive team-based approach with all of these different health care providers.”
Government funding to support new patient medical home
Kevin Weedmark, MLA for Moosomin-Montmartre, says government funding will help support the new Patient Medical Home program and offer more care to patients in Moosomin and area.
“The Patient Medical Home program is about trying to turn medical clinics into more than a clinic, into a medical home,” he says. “For instance, the Moosomin Family Practice Centre isn’t just a group of doctors practicing, it is a patient’s medical home. They can go there and see any physician in the practice, and the physicians other health care professionals to help them. The idea is that is that is your primary point of contact, your medical home.”
Weedmark says the Moosomin Family Practice Centre pioneered some of the concepts involved in the Patient Medical Home model.
“Moosomin has been fortunate that our physicians have always had the vision of having a very collaborative work environment. They’ve worked together very well over the years. The doctors working together in Moosomin have really served as a model for the province,” he said.
He explains how the Moosomin Family Practice Centre serves as a medical hub to the surrounding area.
“Many years ago, when many doctors were working in solo practice, a few doctors got together in Moosomin and set up the Family Practice Centre and it has become a regional hub. Doctors from there are going down south to Wawota, to First Nations in the region, to Whitewood to the west, even east into Manitoba—there are different satellite clinics in different areas that they support. They have a collaborative group practice, and the whole idea of the Patient Medical Home program is to support those physicians to be able to provide even more services.
“Moosomin is very fortunate. Many years ago when the former government was in power, initially there were only two doctors in Moosomin—Dr. Davidson and Dr. Hussein. They were amazing people, that is why you see Hussein Drive and Dr. Davidson Park in Moosomin named after them, because they were incredible people, but only two of them were serving the entire area. There have been different initiatives to grow Moosomin as more of a medical hub over the years, and the Patient Medical Home model is another step in growing that.”
New medical providers in Moosomin
Weedmark explains the new Patient Medical Home program and the new hires that will help support the new program.
“A big step was bringing the Southeast Family Medicine Residency Program to reality. That program is based in Moosomin, which is the only town of its size in Canada where you can do your residency in Family Medicine. That is unique.
“In Moosomin right now there are two first-year residents and two second-year residents, so we have seen that program have success. Doctors such as Dr. Cara Fallis, who was one of the very first graduates of that residency program, have chosen to stay and practice in Moosomin. Today, we have four medical residents who are training in Moosomin under supervision of local physicians—two first-year residents and two second-year residents. Moosomin also has 12 physicians, two locums and one nurse practitioner—so that is 19 primary health care providers.
“Now, what this new Patient Medical Home program does is provide more support to all of them. Under this program Moosomin will receive $768,000 in funding to hire 6.2 FTE positions, and that is for registered nurses (RNs), dieticians, therapists, a pharmacist, and a medical office assistant. The breakdown is full-time equivalent (FTE), so 2.5 FTE RNs, 1.25 FTE dieticians, 1.25 FTE behavioral therapists, and two FTE pharmacists, and one full-time office medical assistant.
“So far, three of those full-time positions have been filled in recent weeks which includes one full-time dietician that started working on March 11 and two full-time RNs. One began on March 16 and the second will start on April 6. They will support the physicians in Moosomin and help them provide a wider range of services within their clinic to provide better care for folks in Moosomin.
“We are lucky we were able to fill these first positions very quickly, and I think that is a testament to our region. It is an incredible community with an incredible medical community.
“This is where health care is such a collaboration between different levels of government. Our government is funding these new positions, SHA is hiring these positions, the local clinic—the Moosomin Family Practice—is the group of doctors. They lease their clinic space from the Southeast Medical Health Corporation which is a group of municipalities that got together and bought the building that the Family Practice leases. That local municipal corporation has been renovating the Family Practice Centre to make new office space to accommodate these new positions. So you see the province, SHA, the physicians and local municipalities all working together. And that makes it work.
“It is a collaborative effort, it is the doctors working with the municipalities, working with the government, working with SHA that makes it all happen and improve health care in our local area. I cannot say enough about the vision and leadership of the local physicians in Moosomin, and the steadfast support of local municipalities who are always there to support health care locally. Those two are leading the way, and our government is stepping in to help support what they are doing with the Patient Medical Home initiative.”
Weedmark says Moosomin is one of 10 communities in Saskatchewan to receive funding for the new Patient Medical Home program.
“Moosomin is one of the 10 communities across the province to receive funding under this program. Another community in our region that is receiving some funding is Esterhazy, where three full-time positions have been created to support physicians there—one dietician, one counsellor, and one RN.”
Weedmark says the funding will help Moosomin continue to grow as a medical hub.
“Moosomin is a pioneer in this model of care and 100 per cent of the credit for that goes to the local physicians. Many years ago, when the Family Practice Centre started setting up satellite clinics in surrounding towns, that is not something that was happening in very many places, and they proved it’s a model that works. You habr multiple physicians sharing call at the hospital, so you don’t have anyone burning out because they’re taking call at the emergency department too many days of the week. The model works, and this is basically building on that success.”
Significant investment
“This funding is a significant investment in the future of Moosomin. This is six new medical professionals that we are adding to Moosomin and it will help make Moosomin more of a medical hub. It has been a long-term building process by the physicians to get it to where it is.”
He adds, “This is a vote of confidence by the government in Moosomin as a health care centre. This is building on all of the work that the local health care foundation has done, the local physicians have done in building up Moosomin as a medical centre. This is going to help the local physicians with their practice, it is going to allow them to add to their practice to provide more services, and this will simply solidify Moosomin even more as a medical hub where you can get a wide range of services.”
