PILOT BUTTE, Sask. — Residents who have long travelled to Regina for medical care now have another option closer to home, as White Butte Pharmacy joins an expanded provincial program offering strep throat and ear infection services.
“This will be much better for us because it is local and that’s what people want,” said White Butte Pharmacy manager Shona Elder at a provincial announcement on Friday.
In a local area like Pilot Butte, Elder said having point-of-care testing is critical.
“People don’t want to go to the ER or urgent care. So, if we can prevent people from having to access those services for minor ailments, ear infections or strep throat, that’s important. But it’s not just about listening to their symptoms. There’s clinical judgment involved. You do an assessment to determine whether they’re even appropriate for swabbing and testing, and that’s important, too.”
The town has been without a doctor or primary physician for nine years now, but Elder is hopeful this announcement can begin a collaborative effort to bring new medical workers to the area.
“When we had a physician, we could collaborate on care and students from the university could help next door, so it would be a big benefit for us.”
The service was first launched as a pilot in January 2025, and Rural and Remote Health Minister Lori Carr said it has been used more than 11,000 times.
“That’s opening up primary care time for practitioners, doctors and nurse practitioners to see other individuals because pharmacists are taking that load off them. As we expand throughout the province, it will expand access to those other professionals because pharmacists are doing that hard work for them.”
That expansion includes more than 100 pharmacies offering testing starting in 2027, with 71 pharmacies offering both strep throat and ear infection services and 31 offering ear infection services only.
But the program may not simply stop with adding more pharmacies, as Elder envisions sites offering more testing.
“I think there are lots of different point-of-care tests that can be done, but they all require time and training. Point-of-care testing is so accurate in many ways now that I think expanding it to other areas would make sense. But I think we just have to go slowly, one step at a time.”
During media scrums, the province also confirmed it is working on a registry with the Saskatchewan Medical Association to provide a list of physicians accepting new patients.
No timeline was given for when this would be completed.
