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Two years before the next provincial election, Carla Beck’s team is starting to share parts of its new plan to improve Saskatchewan health care.
In a news event on Wednesday, Beck announced the first portion of the Saskatchewan NDP’s health care plan, which focuses on improving primary care.
“We will guarantee the people of this province access to a doctor, and we will end the lottery that Saskatchewan people are currently playing with their health and with their lives in pursuit of that needed primary care,” Beck promised, speaking to reporters in front of St. Mary’s Wellness and Education Centre on Oct. 21.
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“We will show Saskatchewan people that there is a plan to take us from last to first again when it comes to health care,” Beck said.
The four-pillar plan for primary care involves a “health care home” for every Saskatchewan resident, “health care hubs” to go beyond the care of what a primary provider offers, a “bridge” to connect residents with resources, even across long distances, and a “backbone,” focusing on keeping the system connected through up-to-date and consistent information.
Meara Conway, deputy house leader with the official Opposition, said the first pillar – providing a “health care home” to every person in the province – will see that “every Saskatchewan resident has access to primary care based on where they live, a team that knows them, that works collaboratively, that plays to their strengths, and is responsible for coordinating their care.”
Conway said six in 10 people in Saskatchewan currently don’t have access to primary care.
Meara Conway, Saskatchewan NDP health critic, outlines the play to improve primary health care in Saskatchewan through her party’s new plan on Oct. 21, 2026. (Libby Gray/650 CKOM)
The concept of the second pillar, a health care hub, “will connect local primary teams with shared services, additional capacity, including home care, mental health and addictions care, allied health professionals, diagnostics, social work and the community programs that affect the social determinants of health – those issues that are so key to people’s ongoing health – instead of patients being left to navigate a maze of disconnected services on their own.”
Team-based care models have seen success already in Saskatchewan, Conway explained, pointing to places like the Associate Family Physicians Clinic in Swift Current. She said the issue is that such models are not available to enough people and there are not enough of them right now.
“Access to a primary care team should be as automatic as your kids’ place in their neighbourhood public school,” Conway said.
Rural and remote health critic, Jared Clarke, spoke to the final two pillars of the primary care plan, referencing distance, travel and mobility as factors that can impede access to health care for Saskatchewan residents.
Clarke spoke about an expanded 811 helpline, telehealth, relational virtual care, community paramedicine, and mobile nurses as resources to be shared across a region to expand capacity.
“This helps people avoid unnecessary trips to hospitals and allows those wishing to remain in their homes to do so longer, while adding capacity to the health-care system,” Clarke explained.
The backbone of that, Clarke said, is that “a health-care system cannot be connected if its information isn’t.”
Referencing the Government of Saskatchewan’s work to digitize medical information, Clarke said a person’s health information should follow patients to wherever they receive care, although that does not currently happen in Saskatchewan.
“This results in people having to repeat their medical history over and over and over again,” he shared. “It means unnecessary duplication of diagnostics and a lack of timely access to information that health-care workers require to adequately treat a patient.”
Clarke referenced “one patient, one record, one connected system” as the goal for health care information in Saskatchewan, in the hands of the NDP.
Beck pointed to trust that has been built between her party and Saskatchewan health care providers as helpful in implementing this plan.
“This is something that health-care providers in this province have been calling for years in this province. I think this is something that’s going to attract more people, more professionals into those roles,” Beck said.
When asked for more detail on the implementation of this plan, Conway shared that this plan is built upon successful models in other provinces, like Ontario, and is meant to improve upon Saskatchewan’s existing health care system in a way that fills the gaps patients are seeing in service.
Conway said the areas where the highest needs are would be where the NDP will start to implement its plan, and spoke of the need to “incentivize team-based collaborative care.”
“When it comes to the hubs, it isn’t so much about creating a whole slew of new services. It’s about the fact that the services we now have do not connect; they don’t talk to each other. If you’re a family physician practising, you may not even know they exist or have a no-barrier way to refer your patient to that service,” Conway explained.
To bring about that low-barrier collaboration, Conway said navigators would be assigned to people in the province seeking a primary care provider to match people with primary-care teams that best fit their needs.
People currently satisfied with their primary care in the province would not be required to leave that care, nor would private practices be required in any way to participate in this model, Conway clarified to 650 CKOM.
“It’s about adding capacity and choices, not taking them away,” said Conway.
She said Ontario has used these navigators to successfully match 180,000 people to care providers in one year.
Conway also spoke to the waste in spending in the health care system, presently, suggesting that changes to the system could be made to prevent having to increase health care spending to fix the concerns seen in the system that this plan was created to address.
“I think we need to start with … making the health-care dollars that we’re currently spending – $8.6 billion more every year – making sure that every dollar counts,” Conway said.
The Saskatchewan Medical Association (SMA) said it was consulted during the development of the NDP’s health care plan.
“What we have heard from physicians for years is that they want stronger primary care, team-based care and better sharing of patient information,” said SMA communications manager, Rachael Kenny, in an email on Wednesday, who noted that “important work” is already underway in the province.
Kenny referenced funding through the Innovation Fund for medical home projects.
She said patients in the province do need regular physicians and care teams.
“The real question is how these ideas would work in practice and whether there are enough physicians, health-care professionals and resources to make them a reality.”
650 CKOM has also reached out to the province’s Ministry of Health for comment.
