The waiting game has begun for Southern Health Sante Sud and other Regional Health Authorities (RHAs) in Manitoba. They had to submit cost-cutting proposals to Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen by last Friday, including how they would cut three per cent from their operating budget and how they could reduce the number of administrative employees by 15 per cent. The Health Minister explains what happens next.

"I'll take a review of them and then they have to go to central government to get reviewed by other Cabinet Ministers as well and then, hopefully within April, we should be able to come forward with some decisions in a lot of the RHAs anyway."

The spring sitting of the Manitoba Legislature resumes Monday after spring break and Goertzen says the Progressive Conservative Government will be very focused on final preparations for the April 11 budget including plans to trim spending on health care. He notes the spending reviews and cost-cutting proposals by RHAs turned into a positive experience for many of them.

"To a large extent, many of them have said that they have ideas that they've been kicking around for the last number of years but they just didn't get a receptive ear to change from the former government. So, I don't expect that for many of the ideas, they'll be new, but they will be new to the public. They'll be hearing different things and looking at doing things in different ways, but the RHAs themselves, I think have been talking about many of these things for a long time."

Goertzen is not belittling the process, noting these are very difficult decisions. However, he believes the majority of people understand that things have to change and are receptive to that. He has repeatedly said that left unchecked, growth in health care spending was on the way to consuming all the revenues taken in by the government. It currently uses about 45 per cent of all provincial spending.