The future direction of health care in Canada could be set Thursday thanks to a report drafted in part by Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall.

Wall and Prince Edward Island Premier Robert Ghiz began looking at "health care innovations" across Canada a year ago. Now they are offering up a report at a meeting with all the premiers in Halifax.

Speaking on John Gormley Live Thursday morning, Premier Wall explained their goal is to take best practices from specific locations and get them into place across the country.

To explain the different concepts for best practices, Wall used the example of how diabetes patients are treated in other parts of Canada.

"For those who have foot ulcers, they can reduce the number of amputations by 80 per cent, in our case that would mean 94 fewer amputations in the last year, think about what that would mean to the patient," he commented.

The report is also about increasing efficiencies.

"It's about better care, but it's also going to be about a sustainable system where we bend the cost curves," he said.

Wall says the bottom line is to improve health care while also making it cheaper and one of the ideas is to cut down on the expense of buying drugs.

"We're going to be pursuing generic drug purchasing, we've said by next April we want to be able to start seeing the savings from identifying three to five generic drugs that we can buy," Wall explained.

Wall also feels work can be done between provinces to drive down staffing costs. Staffing currently accounts for three-quarters of Saskatchewan's health care budget.

Wall admits some of the changes will make a lot of sense and are a long time coming.

"It might seem like common sense and it is probably and probably people will say we should have been doing this before and they're right as well, but we're getting it done now," he said.

Wall says the other premiers have welcomed the report and asked he and Ghiz to continue working for another year.

Edited by CJME's Adriana Christianson