THUNDER BAY -- Gridlock continues to squeeze budgets at the regional hospital.
Peter Myllymaa, vice president of corporate services, said the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences is now expected carry a deficit that could be as high as nearly $6.5 million at the end of March.
In January the hospital was previously forecasting a deficit of $5 million.
Myllymaa attributed the increased shortfall to the hospital seeing a patient load much higher than for funding received.
“The funded number of beds we have is 395. In January we saw two days where we hit 469 patients,” Myllymaa said on Friday.
“The actual level of alternate level of care patients has gone down somewhat. It’s climbing again but without that funding in place we would be in a worse situation.”
Last year former Health Minister Deb Matthews announced a $14 million package for local health partners, including the hospital, Local Health Integration Network and St. Joseph’s Care Group to help alleviate gridlock by providing long-term spaces for alternate level of care patients.
Despite the continued high patient volumes, Myllymaa insists the funding has served its purpose though he’s not sure if there will be more help on the way.
The hospital is using surplus working capital to cover the shortfall on the operating side but that’s not a permanent solution.
“At this point we have not heard if there’s any additional funding coming for this fiscal year,” he said.
“If nothing changes for next year we’ll continue to see the same type of pressure, so either some additional revenue would be of assistance or if we can see some of the patient load be decreased by getting the ALC patients out of the hospital and into a more appropriate setting.”
