Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen says his government will make decisions on spending cuts for Regional Health Authorities (RHA) early next month, before the new budget comes down April 11. He has asked RHAs to trim their annual expenditures by three per cent and to have proposals into his office by March 31. Goertzen has asked RHAs to examine their spending through two different lenses.

"One is: Are you doing the things the right way? Are there ways that you can find to do things more effectively and more efficiently? But also, are you doing the right things? Are there things that, maybe, aren't really core services, in the context of health care, that you could look at not doing? Those are the two different lenses that RHA's are looking at for providing suggestions. They'll be providing them to me by the end of the month, by March 31 and then government, as a whole, will look at them and make determinations of how to go forward."

Goertzen says he advised RHAs not to look at this as strictly a cost exercise, but also as a service exercise and to look at how they would set up the health care system if they were starting from scratch and could design a new way of doing things. He adds some people are welcoming this opportunity.

"This is one of the things that encourages me. I hear from a lot of people in the system who say, for the last 20 years, we've not really been able to bring any ideas. It's all just been more money, more money, more money and there hasn't been any appetite to look at, how do we do things differently. While I know it can cause uncertainty for people in the system, and I understand that, there are also a lot of people saying, we're really excited that we can actually maybe do things in a better way that hasn't been listened to in the past because nobody really wanted to make those kinds of decisions."

Goertzen's hope is that this RHA budget review process will ultimately result in a better, more efficient system. Southern Health Santé Sud was asked to find $11-million in cost savings in 2017-18 by the province.

See related story: "$11-Million in Cuts for Southern Health"