A new strategic plan will soon be implemented by the Prairie Mountain Health region.

Prairie Mountain Health has developed the new five-year strategic plan. It identifies the health region's six priorities that are aimed at building a healthier population, and sustainable health system.

RHA CEO Penny Gilson says one priority is improving access to health care delivery.

"As we've travelled across the region and met with various communities, in particular our first nations communities in the North, there are certainly some access to care issues that we would like to continue to improve on. Capacity building is another area, that in particular speaks to our need to continuously be diligent in our recruitment and retention efforts of staff across the region."

Other priorities are improved service delivery, health system innovation, health system sustainability, improving health status and reducing disparities. Gilson talks about considering amalgamating services in the region.

"I don't know at this point in time. Certainly when you look at the Boissevain Deloraine area for example, the shared on-call relationship between those two communities have certainly assisted with the sustainability there because you're grouping people who need to be on call into larger groups -- therefore when someone leaves you're not into an automatic crisis -- but for right now most communities are saying they want to maintain as much as they can locally."

She discusses the timeline and preparation.

"Over the course of now until that April 1st of 2016 each program and service will be taking a look at how did they develop their own operation strategies to meet the needs of what the strategic plan is saying. There'll be some work that'll gear up to that date, but then we'll move forward with the new strategic plan."

The new five year plan officially starts April 1,2016 and runs until 2021.