Expect a longer wait for that operation you‘re slated for. Interior Health must reduce elective surgeries and diagnostic testing to absorb a $12-million shortfall in this year‘s clinical budget. The arrears are on top of the $28 million worth of administrative cuts needed to balance this year‘s health budget. “There will be
an impact on elective surgery, guaranteed,” Murray Ramsden, the health authority‘s CEO, said Thursday. “There will be an impact on diagnostics.” Patients should notice the service reduction at Kelowna General and Kamloops‘ Royal Inland hospitals, which are both over budget. If the swine flu sends more people to emergency rooms, the shortfalls could be greater. “Come the fall, do we have to go even deeper?” Ramsden said. “You could ask me in November, why are you saying $15 million? It could be H1N1 is taking off.”The revelation follows earlier projections of $20 million and then $28 million that must be hacked from IH‘s $1.6-billion operating budget. A hundred administrative positions have already disappeared – 50 of them through layoffs. IH has frozen its clinical budget at last year‘s level. Ramsden doubts that clinical staff face pink slips. Some may have to “bump” junior colleagues into other positions, but “very seldom do we have clinical people leaving the organization,” he said. People could wait longer for elective CT scans and MRIs. “We are over from where we should be at this time of year,” Ramsden said. “Elective lists may become longer if we‘re unable to find clinical efficiencies … (as well as) elective CTs, MRIs, diagnostic procedures.” With the recession shrinking government revenues, the salad days of extra millions for health services are over.
Finance Minister Colin Hansen projects a “very very difficult” budget Sept. 1 to address a $3-billion deficit.Surgeons at Kelowna General Hospital are already performing fewer operations. To trim costs, IH has closed one of the eight operating rooms at KGH for nine weeks this summer. Slowdowns are also planned for Christmas and Easter. NDP Health Critic Adrian Dix predicts Interior Health will cut elective surgery by 10 per cent – as many as 5,000 surgeries – by next March. He based his forecast on comments made by Andrew Neuner, chief operating officer for the Kamloops region, who this week projected 10 per cent fewer elective surgeries in his area. Dix said he believes Interior patients will undergo fewer hip and knee replacements, cataract surgeries, hernia repairs, carpel tunnel procedures and other operations. “We‘re talking about the cancellation, the reduction of thousands of surgeries in the Interior Health Authority,” he said Thursday. “The B.C. Liberal government clearly lied about the nature of those cuts.” Dix estimates 2,000 to 5,000 fewer surgeries will be performed in the Southern Interior. The Liberals accused him of fear-mongering when he projected a $320-million health deficit during the spring election campaign, he said. He believes the Liberals would have lost the vote if they‘d told the truth about budget cuts. “The premier looked straight in the camera during the debate and said ’We will reduce wait times,‘” Dix said. “People have to stand up and defend their public health-care system. This is not acceptable … to be cutting surgeries when people are waiting in pain.” Interior Health hopes to perform 2,014 hip and knee procedures by next spring, Ramsden said. He wants the “vast majority” of patients to have those surgeries done within 26 weeks of being booked. He distanced himself from Dix‘s scenario of 10 per cent fewer surgeries. “I can‘t comment on whether it‘s eight or 10 or five. It‘s up to each area.” Meanwhile, KGH called a Code Purple on Thursday due to a run of patients on Emergency. Staff cleared patients able to move out of acute-care beds to make room for new admissions.
No comments:
Post a Comment