Quinte Health Care’s Board of Directors March 26/2019. (Photo: Quinte News)
It’s a first no one wanted to be involved in.
On Tuesday, Quinte Health Care’s Board of Directors contravened its own policy and passed a 2019/20 operating plan (budget) featuring a $4.7 million deficit.
To a person, the board agreed with member Kimberley Woodhouse who said, “We’ve done restructurings, we’ve made cuts and we’ve been making changes for several years. At some time, all there is to say is that there simply isn’t enough money! And that’s where this board is now.”
The board’s spending plan (totalling $197 million) has to be approved by the provincial government. Written into the numbers are assumptions that the province will increase base funding this year by 2% and that it will again provide $4.5 in extra “surge” funding to help increase care beds during times of extraordinary demand, such as flu season.
Also packaged into the plan is a request that the province increase Quinte Health Care’s base funding by $5 million in the fiscal year 2019/20. If the province did that, it would erase the proposed deficit.
QHC management has been telling provincial governments repeatedly in recent years that it is not being treated fairly under the current funding formula and it has some new ammunition to back up its demands for more base funding.
An “operations assessment” done by independent experts has found that out of 18 similar hospital operations in the province, only two were running more efficiently than QHC’s.
Chair of the Board Stuart Wright called management and front-line staff “champions for making tough decisions over the years, some of them causing blowback not only internally but from the general community, all the while providing quality health care. We as a board have no choice but to support our staff and keep medical services for our residents, as they are by approving this deficit budget.”
The operating plan (budget) also includes $10.3 million for capital projects, the largest of which at $4 million is an expansion of the Intensive Care Unit at Belleville General Hospital.
