Changes to funding for the province's health care system has arrived in Saskatchewan, hoping to round out the province's coverage of all things health-related.

Mental health and addictions were a focal point of the newly released Saskatchewan Health Authority's 2019-20 operating budget and capital expenditure plan, but there were other issues still taking resources from the SHA.

"The big pressure on operations are the same things that have impacted our healthcare system for years," Scott Livingstone, the CEO of the Saskatchewan Health Authority said. "The big ones are the changing demographics on our population, both with an aging population, as well as the number of people within our province that have chronic diseases and multiple chronic diseases continue to put a lot of pressure on our system."

Other more wide-ranging focuses for this fiscal year's budget include improving team-based care in communities and hospitals for addictions and mental health care, promoting patient and staff safety, making physicians enhanced leaders in the healthcare system, and increasing efficiency.

Providing staff with the right equipment, reducing redundancies in their system, and improving access for patients are all ways that the organization says they will be looking to reach these goals.

Livingstone said prioritizing the needed improvements for specific regions is one way which the authority said they have improved since amalgamating the health regions in the province.

Improving the overall health of the province through things like health networks and multi-disciplinary teams throughout Saskatchewan was said to be a goal of the SHA, who would be able to reap the benefits of a less-stressed healthcare system down the line.

In terms of mental health and addictions services, Livingstone gave some insight into how funding to combat the two factors will be implemented.

"Most of the mental health and addictions investments are about expanding community-based beds, so it's an expansion of service post-rehab, and other community-based services, as you can see from the budget announcement," the former CEO of the Saskatchewan Health Information Network said.

"Very quickly we'll see some requests for proposals going out to community partners to actually improve access to community-based mental health and addictions services."

A focus on better integrating the healthcare system in the province is also one topic the health authority will be looking to refine.