The St. Joseph's Hospital has a new executive director, with Candace Kopec already having ties to southeast healthcare.

She details some of her past work that includes overseeing jurisdictions that include Estevan and smaller communities.

"I've been involved in just over 25 years of healthcare experience. I started as a dietitian in Weyburn, which included responsibility for parts of southeast Saskatchewan. About 10 years ago, I moved into management overseeing the chronic disease programs in the former Sun Country Health region. This past year I worked as the primary healthcare director for Southeast 9, which is the area that includes Estevan, Carlyle as well as Stoughton, Lampman, Oxbow, Gainsborough, and Redvers."

Kopec says she's hoping to get an understanding of just what the hospital can do and what resources it has before planning anything out.

"It's about understanding the strengths and our pressures of all our programs and services. I think this is week 4, so I'm really doing the assessments of where we are at with all of our programs and services before I know what improvements we need to make. I'm really thankful for the strong support of the community."

"The Radiothon was just last week and thanks to the community, we have an opportunity to make improvements to our ER, so our emergency department greatly benefits from the money raised from the community. We're looking at increasing the patient flow in the emergency department, so that's one of the improvements we'll definitely be involved in."

Kopec says that overall she's looking forward to joining the experienced team at the hospital.

"I'm definitely looking at joining a great group of healthcare providers, there's already a dedicated team there, so I'm just looking to see how I can join the team and support them so we can continue to provide all the programs and services as close to home as possible to all of our community members."