SASKATOON - At a special meeting Thursday, the board of the Saskatchewan Health Authority has approved the hire of Andrew Will as their new Chief Executive Officer.
Will takes over as CEO following a long period as interim CEO after the departure of Scott Livingstone in Dec. 2021.
Since January, SHA had conducted a lengthy search process and had attracted a number of candidates, but in the end the board decided to stay in-house with the hire of Will.
Prior to serving as interim CEO, Will had been Vice President of Infrastructure, Information and Support for the SHA. Before that he had held leadership roles as CEO at a number of health regions in Saskatchewan and Alberta.
“Andrew is experienced, accomplished and a capable leader,” said SHA board chair Arlene Wiks. “Born and educated in Saskatchewan, Andrew has dedicated his career to health care, serving 30 years as a health care leader.”
Will told the board he was excited about taking on the role.
“I am honoured and humbled to serve in this role as a part of the health care team for the Saskatchewan Health Authority for two really important reasons,” Will said.
“One, being that I know how important the services are that the Saskatchewan Health Authority and our team is, how important our services are to the people in his province, and having grown up in Saskatchewan and spent most of my life here in this province and knowing that family and friends live here, it means a lot to me to serve as a part of our healthcare team. And also I’m really honoured to serve alongside so many healthcare providers, staff physicians, volunteers as they provide service to patients in this province every hour of every day.”
Will acknowledged some challenges facing the SHA, noting the shortages of health care professionals across the country and world.
“We know that our efforts will be focused through supports the government has put in place on the Health and Human Resources Action Plan to recruit and retain and train and incent our team members, so we have the people needed to serve health care in communities throughout the province.”
He also noted the SHA “fell behind in the number of key areas” during the time they responded to the COVID-19 pandemic.
To respond to that, Will said significant investments “have been approved and are moving forward in enhancing and expanding surgical capacity diagnostics, and also increasing intensive care unit and critical care capacity.” He also said they are advancing enhancements for mental health and addictions, and working on improving patient flow.
He acknowledged partnerships with First Nation and Métis communities, and also made it known rural service would be a priority, saying addressing service disruptions in rural and remote communities would be a focus going forward.
On rural and remote areas, Will said “providing care as close to home as possible is one of the priorities for the Saskatchewan Health Authority.”
“We know that as we have faced a shortage of healthcare professionals that it certainly had an impact on a number of rural communities in the province. With some of our smaller healthcare facilities, when we lose even one nurse or a lab technician or a combined lab-x-ray technician, it can have an impact on the sustainability of that service. So we’ve been working really hard with the local community to attract, recruit, and retain staff in rural settings.”
Will also acknowledged the challenges faced in primary health care with people struggling to access family doctors.
“We would certainly acknowledge challenges that people have in accessing primary healthcare,” said Will. “We do our best to try and have information available to the public where primary care providers are available, whether it be physicians or nurse practitioners. We have been making (and) continue to make investments, not just in physician availability but also nurse practitioners and other primary care providers.”
He was asked about the situation in North Battleford which was impacted by the departure of three primary care doctors at the end of this summer.
“I certainly acknowledge some of the turnover that we’ve seen in physicians in North Battleford,“ said Will. He said their team was working to “Helps up on the efforts of the clinic in North Battleford to help recruit physicians into their practice — lots more work to be done there."
