Applying to Become a New Customer

3sHealth works in partnership with the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) and the Saskatchewan Cancer Agency (SCA) to pursue an integrated approach to procuring goods and services to improve the delivery of a better health system for Saskatchewan patients and families.

By engaging clinicians, employees, and patients, applying best practices, and working collaboratively with health system partners, Contracting supports and leads supply chain initiatives and implements national, provincial, and multi-provincial contracts for products, services, and supplies. These services ensure we can procure high-quality products at the best price possible.

We offer the following contract categories that your organization can participate in:

• Capital Equipment
• Clinical Services
• Nutrition and Food
• Pharmacy
• Signature Services
• Support Services

The flow of information to the patient along their health-care journey is critical to excellent care. The Dictation and Transcription service line ensures accurate patient care report information flows between health-care providers in a timely fashion so that patients continue to receive high-quality care. 

Our Transcription service provides dictation software solutions that facilitate accurate and timely patient information. Our team of medical transcriptionists strive to transcribe and distribute all reports within 24 hours and transcribe over 500,000 acute care reports annually, equaling approximately 1.7 million minutes of care providers’ dictations in 2022-23. This service is currently provided to approximately 1,950 clinicians, with the turnaround time for clinician-dictated reports currently averaging 8.5 hours. 

3sHealth also provides self-edit dictation software that enables clinicians to dictate into a microphone, edit the text immediately on the computer screen, approve the final report, and save it immediately to the patients’ electronic medical record. This does not require a medical transcriptionist to edit the patient report, significantly reducing turnaround time to the patient’s care team. For example, before self-edit, the average turnaround time for SHA radiology reports was 60 hours; after self-edit, 83 per cent of reports are available within 30 minutes or less. 

3sHealth provides service and support to approximately 46,000 Employee Benefit Plan (EBP) members, representing 71 health care employers in Saskatchewan. In 2023, the EBP Trusts paid $174 million in group life insurance, disability income plan benefits, and health and dental claim reimbursements to plan members.

3sHealth customers will benefit from our years of experience administering these plans, a large and capable benefits team providing world-class customer service, and a Board of Trustees that is jointly comprised of employer and union representatives.

The plans offered include:

• Group Life Insurance Plan, which includes Life and Accidental Death and Dismemberment insurance for eligible plan members;
• Disability Income Plans, which provide protection to members from a complete loss of income due to illness or injury;
• Core Dental Plan, which can be purchased as a stand-alone dental plan or combined with the Enhanced Dental and Extended Health Care Plan;
• Enhanced Dental Plan, which offers 270 additional coverage codes than the Core Dental Plan and Extended Health Care Plan, which provides a vast number of health benefits; and
• Out-of-Scope Flexible Spending Plan, which provides out-of-scope employees a choice between a Health Spending Account (for CRA-eligible health and dental expenses) and a Lifestyle Spending Account (for expenses such as fitness and personal wellness, and RRSP or TFSA contributions).

[Please note: The health system is adopting a new, integrated business administration system that will replace current payroll and benefit technology. Until this system is launched and stabilized, 3sHealth will not be able to onboard new customers.]

The Employee Family Assistance Program (EFAP) is managed by the Human Resources Department at 3sHealth. While it is an internal service line, it administers the program to health-care employers across Saskatchewan. This program can serve as a simple and impactful way to support the health and mental wellbeing of your employees.

The EFAP provides immediate and confidential help for any work, health, or life concern you and your immediate family members may have. Professionally trained clinicians are available to help achieve well-being, manage relationships and family, deal with workplace challenges, find child and eldercare resources, get legal advice, receive financial guidance, and more. There is no cost to employees or their family to use the EFAP.

The EFAP is completely confidential. No one, including the employer, will ever know that the program has been used and it can be accessed 24/7 by phone, web or mobile app.

The Linen service line manages the linen contract with K-Bro Linen Systems Inc., providing health-care linens to over 170 facilities throughout Saskatchewan. More than 29 million pounds of linen is delivered annually. 

Linens are processed in K-Bro’s Healthcare Laundry Accreditation Council-certified facility, ensuring that all processes are in place to meet the highest standards of laundry processing. The linen contract includes key performance indicators which measure the quality and delivery of service, including third-party hygienic testing of linens, regular quality audits, and monthly reporting of fill rates. These measures help ensure that customers receive a high quality of service delivery throughout the province. 

The Linen Services team works with K-Bro to ensure patient-centred service. Together, the teams provide education to end users and work with customers to ensure linens are being utilized in an effective way. Customers of the linen service benefit from the centralized processing model, which reduces the costs to wash the linen and provides a consistent and reliable product across facilities.

The Saskatchewan Healthcare Employees’ Pension Plan (SHEPP) is the largest defined benefit pension plan in Saskatchewan and the only industry-wide pension plan serving the health-care sector. This multi-employer plan includes 48 participating employers and more than 63,000 members, providing early, normal, and postponed retirement benefits, optional forms of pension upon retirement, termination benefits, death benefits, and more. Because it is a defined benefit plan, members can count on a secure, predictable retirement income based on a defined formula that accounts for eligible earnings and years of service.

SHEPP will onboard 3sHealth customers after approval by its board.

Transformational Services provides leadership for transformational change initiatives in the areas of project management, change management, business analysis, and other consulting services. This service line works collaboratively with health system partners, supporting them to successfully deliver on their initiatives by providing consulting, analysis, and project implementation services to partners across the health-care system. In 2022-23 alone, the team completed 11 projects that positively impacted over 31,000 lives and contributed over $1.4 million to the health system.

The services provided include:

• Project Management – Managing the project’s deliverables for the life of the project, allowing business leaders to lead the change while managing their day-to-day work.
• Change Management - Applying structured processes and a set of tools for leading the “people side” of change to achieve a desired outcome.
• Business Case Development – Using collaborative processes to understand the current state, envision a future state that improves patient and family services, and to clearly define and document the “betters” the change will make.
• Analytical Support - Conducting an end-to-end analysis of data, processes, and pain points to accurately identify the root cause of the business problem and to offer possible solutions/improvements.

Transformational Services - Initiative Support Request Form

The Payroll and Scheduling Services team ensures that health system employees receive their pay accurately and on time by administering the various scheduling, human resources, and payroll systems that health system partners use. 3sHealth’s goal is to ensure the right provider is working at the right time and in the right place to enable excellent patient care.

Currently, Payroll and Scheduling Services provides payroll services for three organizations (3sHealth, eHealth, and SAHO). The team helped facilitate the payment of more than $2.79 billion in compensation to approximately 55,181 health employees across 27 organizations in 2023-24.

[Please note: The health system is adopting a new, integrated business administration system that will replace current payroll and scheduling technology. Until this system is launched and stabilized, 3sHealth will not be able to onboard new customers.]