There may be changes coming to security practices to our Dr. F. H. Wigmore Regional Hospital; in fact, they're currently looking at strategies for all facilities within the Saskatchewan Health Authority.

Officials hope this process will make sure that all hospitals and facilities ensure the safety of staff, visitors and patients, according to the Executive Director of Infrastructure Management, Derek Miller.

"The intent of the review is really two fold. One is we brought together the 12 health regions into a single health authority. We want to create a provincial program for security," explained Miller. "We want the review to basically describe to us the current state of security across our various facilities. And the second part of the report is about recommendations, about how we would structure and operate provincial security programs."

When exactly these changes or upgrades will be implemented is still up in their air as they are waiting for the report. Once they have it, they will have to go through it line by line to make any determinations.

"We are anticipating receiving the report likely in a month or so, likely in August. At that point we'll be reviewing it internally and considering the various recommendations. At that point it'll inform us of our next steps as we develop our strategy for setting up this provincial program for security."

But the biggest question is, will Moose Jaw be impacted? Miller said he's uncertain as our city has a brand new facility which would rule out some concerns, but that only covers infrastructure, and officials still need to look over things like practices that are currently in place. 

"Certainly a new hospital has a lot of the infrastructure that you would expect with a new facility that other facilities don't have. Typically when we design new hospitals nowadays, we take into consideration the physical design and how that supports safety and security. Also with respect to things like security infrastructure with access control and cameras and those those kinds of things. It would probably be in a more advanced state."

He noted that various concerns had floated around the Executive Leadership team, and they had decided there's no better time than now to analyze their current system.

That being said, we may require upgrades once a provincial strategy is settled, despite being in an advantageous position in Moose Jaw.