Cypress Health Region approves balanced $134 million operating budget

The Cypress Health Region released their annual budget on June 6, and the region says they’re satisfied with the results.

“I think that it’s a budget that we can live to,” executive director of finance Larry Allsen said after the meeting. The $134.3 million budget gives the Health Region a bit of flexibility to deal with any future problems, which is something they wouldn’t have if they perfectly balanced the books.

“Anytime you balance a budget to zero, anything can happen,” he said.

Unsurprisingly, the health region’s biggest expenses will come from patient and resident services, which will cost an estimated $51 million. Other more costly items include community health services, which account for $21.4 million, and support services, which will cost $24.9 million.

Allsen described the budget as a status quo budget designed to maintain as many services as possible.

Health region CEO Beth Vachon said they’ve been put in a tough spot, and all things considered they’re happy with what they were able to retain.

“Knowing that the whole health system has committed to really flattening the cost of health care, the fact that we’re able to maintain all of our existing services, I think, is good news in a region when we have made that commitment to really start reducing the cost of healthcare spending,”

“It’s not a bad thing that we’re able to maintain everything that we’ve had,” she continued. “We’re not cutting services, we’re not cutting staff, so that really is the good news coming out of this budget.”

That doesn’t mean there wasn’t a bit of belt tightening. The region did vacancy manage more than a dozen positions they were having troubles filling. Examples include internship positions for health profession- als, which weren’t being filled, but were still earmarked on the budget.

The region says they are still actively recruiting to fill the positions, but in the meantime say that money could be better spent elsewhere.

“We had some vacant positions that we eliminated right out of the budget,” Allsen said. “The ones we vacancy managed... we’re only going to have six months worth of budget in there for that position.”

For example, a health care professional like a psychologist can be difficult to attract and keep. In the meantime, the health region will take that money and use it in other areas. Allsen did say, however, that if someone were available to fill a position sooner than expected they’d do some juggling to make it work.

“In an organization this size we know that there’s a certain percentage of turnover and some of our positions are hard to recruit,” Vachon added. “As we look back over the years we can pretty much guarantee that there’s a million dollars worth of vacant positions throughout the course of an entire year.”

“It’s a tool to help you balance your budget,” Allsen concluded.

The budget also did see some unavoidable cost increases at the region moved to meet changing demands. The region says the type of staff needed to provide care is changing, and the need for region services is only growing.

“We’ve identified this for the last few years,” Vachon said. “We’re seeing a steady increase. This is one thing that’s been in our mind.”

Although the budget received board approval, it still has to be forwarded to the Minister of Health for review and formal approval.