MacKinnon endorses Fyke Report; calls for funding & partnerships

– Supports ‘Academic Health Sciences Centre’ –

U of S President Peter MacKinnon took a strong message of support for the Fyke Report on Saskatchewan health care when he appeared before televised hearings in the Legislative Assembly in Regina June 27.

MacKinnon used his half-hour before the legislative committee to say, "Mr. Fyke strongly emphasizes the need for a provincial health research strategy and he further recommends that Saskatoon be designated as Academic Health Sciences Centre. The University of Saskatchewan fully endorses both recommendations and would like to see the Province work toward their implementation as quickly as possible."

MacKinnon told legislators "We have months, not years, to address (these issues)."

And, he said, it’s crucial for the province’s future to save the College of Medicine and foster a closer partnership between it and Saskatoon District Health.

The College is key because it trains health care professionals who provide service delivery, it attracts and retains specialists who are often drawn to an academic centre, and it conducts the research that leads to advances in health care.

MacKinnon said the province will need to make investments in three main areas:

• Human Resources – providing enough faculty to carry out the clinical service, the teaching, and the research that is called for.
• Research – to turn around the current decline of the College of Medicine in the competition for national research funding. This means a strong provincial component of health research funding, and MacKinnon endorsed Fyke’s call for one to two per cent of health funding, or about $20 million per year, to go to research.
• Infrastructure – to building a major new "integrated health sciences facility" at the U of S, that would bring classrooms and labs up to standard and would lead to efficiencies by putting all the health science disciplines together under one roof.

MacKinnon also endorsed Fyke’s call for "a constructive partnership" between the College of Medicine, Saskatoon District Health, and the U of S.

He said in such a partnership, "educational requirements must not compromise equitable and reliable service delivery; and the service environment must be hospitable to first-class educational and research opportunities."

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