Health region may lay off staff due to provincial cuts

There will be layoffs in the Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region, although CEO Keith Dewar can’t yet say how many.

While RQHR has previously relied on attrition to reduce staffing numbers, he said that probably won’t cut it in the new fiscal year, which begins Saturday.

The Regina Qu’Appelle Regional Health Authority was expected to pass RQHR’s interim budget at its meeting Wednesday evening. The billion-dollar spending plan does not include the 3.5-per-cent public sector cost savings mandated by Premier Brad Wall.

“My sense is as these changes get bigger, there will be layoffs, and with the program changes that were just announced, there will be layoffs with those,” said Dewar.

“Not knowing how the 3.5 per cent will be found, but I assume that there will be some layoffs with that.”

Without tri mm ing ,RQ HR would have projected a deficit of $26.9 million for 2017-18, including a $5.36-million deficit carried over from 2016-17.

The health region will look to medical remuneration, supplies and administration for cost savings, as well as cutting where there is unused capacity (rural beds, for example).

“Our focus is on those areas where we’re not performing well. Either we’re using more resources than our colleagues or peers would to do the same thing,” said Dewar, including in the areas of lengths of stay and outpatient care.

RQHR hospitalizes patients with ambulatory conditions 50 per cent more often than other jurisdictions do, which signals “a gap in your primary care system, because people are getting sick with a chronic disease which could be managed in the community.”

For the past three years, the primary care system has been a main focus for RQHR.

Falls and medication errors are the “two biggest areas of harm we create for people we serve,” said Dewar. By 2020, the goal is to cause zero harm to patients, residents and staff.

Those goals will carry on once the RQHR dissolves into a new single provincial health authority, sometime later this year.

“Most of those (goals) … have been driven provincially anyways,” he said.

Dewar said the amalgamation poses a risk to staff engagement, as most of the senior administrative staff will be out of a job once the 12 health regions become one.

“We’re all human, too,” Dewar said.

He personally tries to “minimize how much it impacts my work.”

Another challenge for the health region, Dewar said, is finding an additional 3.5-per-cent cost savings.

“Our bottom line goes as our FTEs go,” he said.

A CUPE contract is up for negotiation this year.

Dewar said wait times will go up in some areas, but reducing emergency department wait times remains a goal.

RQHR’s budget will be submitted to the ministry for tweaking over the next couple of months; the final budget is due June 2.

RQHR serves about 290,000 people as a primary health-care provider. Another 210,000 people travel from other health regions to use RQHR’s services.

The health region spends $2.84 million each day and has 11,000 employees.

People are getting sick with a chronic disease which could be managed in the community.