The Saskatchewan Health Authority and 3sHealth are informing residents that after an issue with their letter distribution system, referrals and follow-up letters may be delayed for a number of patients across the province.

Mark Anderson, CEO of 3sHealth, explains what happened:

"The way the 'auto-distribute' was set up in the technology, there was a field called 'addressee' and the intent of that field was to populate the actual letter itself, but it didn't automatically cause the letter to be distributed to that specific recipient of that letter."

"We also are in the process of notifying all of the physicians and patients who may have been impacted by this issue. At this point, based on our audits, we think about 250 specific instances have happened where this has occurred."

Anderson goes on to say that they've taken a number of precautionary measures to ensure this doesn't happen again, but for now, the fallout of the error isn't fully known.

"At this point we are not 100% certain of all of the implications. We are working with the physicians that have dictated these reports so that we can ensure that we understand what all of the implications are and what the delayed responses have meant."