THUNDER BAY -- The regional hospital will continue to face financial pressure as long as there's pressure on patient care.
Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre projects a deficit of more than $5 million by March 31. Executive vice-president of corporate services and operations Peter Myllymaa said the hospital is funded for 375 beds but sees up to 440 every day.
"That's definitely driving our costs up and putting pressure on the hospital," he said.
But while other hospitals in the North have resorted to layoffs or attrition to cut costs, Myllymaa said Thunder Bay is running an extremely efficient hospital when it comes to staff to patient ratios and isn't about to change.
"Unless that patient load has decreased it's not something we've even considered at this point," he said.
"The last thing we want to do is to impact patient care. Patient care obviously drives our decision making here and we'll continue to do that."
The province injected $14 million last year into the local system to ease gridlock, which helped.
Myllymaa said that would be good news if the province stepped in again but in the meantime the hospital is in constant discussions with the North West Local Health Integration Network and other partners to try to ease the gridlock.
"It's just continuing to work with those partners and the LHIN to determine what we can do going forward," he said.
Hospitals province-wide are facing the same pressures Myllymaa added.
