They're performing surgeries even faster than they used to but there's still room for improvement.  The province has released new numbers for surgical wait times in Saskatchewan and is report 79% of procedures are happening within three months of the patient being referred.

The Regina and Saskatoon Health Regions are still facing problems meeting the goal and are dragging down the average. Here in the Five Hills Health Region, Executive Director of Clinical Services Laurie Albinet says they're getting about 95% of their surgeries done within three months.

"So far, in our fiscal year we've performed about 2900 surgical cases and 1800 endoscope cases in our operating room." explained Albinet. "Our focus is ensuring that everybody gets their surgery in as timely as possible way."

Pooling their resources has been one of the most helpful moves according to Albinet.  They'll bring in a free surgeon from another health region if they have open operating rooms, helping to get through their patient list, even bringing in patients from other cities if they've been waiting too long.

Albinet is also interested to see how the new hospital is going to help their wait times once the new facility on the north side of the city opens next year.  Right now, they have three operating rooms but will have four in the new hospital so they should be able to perform even more procedures in the near future.