REGINA – The Saskatchewan Health Authority has announced it is bringing in an updated emergency service disruption process to let people know about which emergency services are available in the province.
The changes were posted in a news release on the SHA website and announced in the Legislature by Health Minister Jeremy Cockrill on Thursday.
According to the SHA news release, starting in early November all emergency service disruptions, regardless of length, will be posted publicly on SHA’s website with updates happening daily at 4:00 p.m., every day for all seven days of the week.
In a statement, Derek Miller, Chief Operating Officer of the SHA, said the changes “will ensure that accurate and reliable information about service availability will be consistently available to the public while our teams work to restore emergency services impacted by temporary disruptions.”
At the moment, SHA posts service disruptions which run seven days or more. According to the SHA, the new reporting process will provide patients an alphabetical listing of all SHA facilities experiencing disruptions to ER services, updated at 4 p.m. each day. Disruptions will also be reflected on individual Facility and Location pages on the SHA’s website.
SHA also stated they have “implemented several internal process improvements to improve accuracy of reported data and provide enhanced support to SHA team members who are reporting local service disruptions." This is likely a response to the highly publicized incidents in the past couple of months in which notifications went out redirecting patients to ER facilities which happened to be closed at the time.
SHA adds that as changes to service availability can occur on short notice, not all disruptions may appear on the service disruption page immediately.
When this happens, says the SHA, signage will be posted and information will be reflected in the next daily update. They also note that Healthline 811 will have real-time information regarding the availability of emergency services across the province.
Following implementation, SHA states it will be continuing system improvements, with “a goal of providing real-time, public updates regarding the status of emergency service disruptions.”
In speaking to reporters at the Legislature Cockrill expressed optimism the new system will work out.
“We’ve introduced this new process. We’re going to see how it goes for the next several weeks and months. There might be an opportunity to tailor it, to further tailor it down the road, but certainly I think this new process is really important for the people of Saskatchewan.”
As for daily reporting at 4 p.m. instead of happening immediately, Cockrill said there was “always a balance between, you know, the resources that you put into kind of a process like that.”
“At the end of the day I want the Saskatchewan Health Authority focused on the biggest goal, is reducing the number of disruptions. That’s what I want the Saskatchewan Health Authority spending the bulk of their time. So I think this strikes a balance between making sure that the process is not two onerous on Health Authority staff where they can also balance the fact that we have to put patients first each and every single day and make sure that that care can be provided.”
Cockrill's comments on health care disruptions came on the same day that the opposition NDP again hammered the government on the issue, as they released internal SHA data obtained by a freedom of information request.
Those numbers showed a massive increase in service disruptions from 86 service closures during the first 18 months of Premier Scott Moe’s administration Feb. 2018 to July 2019, but surging to 643 during the most recent 18 months for which data is available (Nov. 2023 to May 2025).
The policy change on notifications also comes on the same day NDP Rural and Remote Health critic Jared Clarke introduced first reading of a private member’s bill aimed at forcing the SHA to notify the public whenever hospitals are closed.
He made it known his bill, called The Provincial Health Authority (ER Closure right-to-know) Amendment Act, will go further than what is coming from the SHA.
“The policy the minister announced today does not go far enough,” Clarke said. “The bill that I introduced would require the SHA to publicly notify folks and communities whether a hospital is open or closed within an hour.”
He said the government’s “policy, which could be changed at any time, is only going to be updated once a day. This is not what folks in rural Saskatchewan have been asking for. They want to know in an emergency, right now, whether or not a hospital is open or closed. This policy change does not do that.”
