. E-mail This Article

Health board cash crunch

Four deficits top $3 million

Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Nov 06/00) - The government is facing a new challenge -- what to do when health boards run into financial difficulties.

Before this year no health board had run a deficit. This year, four of the NWT's nine boards are running deficits that together total more than $3 million.

"The policy under which the health boards are expected to operate was surplus retention, deficit recovery," said Health and Social Services Minister Jane Groenewegen. "So if they run a deficit, in the following year's operation they're supposed to come to us with a plan of how they might recover their deficit."

Groenewegen said the recovery plan can not include a reduction in services.

Responsibility for administering health care programs was transferred to community and regional boards that wished to accept it by the last government.

In the legislative assembly last week, North Slave MLA Leon Lafferty questioned whether the NWT government is providing adequate health funding.

"When we turn over services, we need to ensure that adequate funding is provided," Lafferty told the assembly.

When a board runs a deficit, the government and the board must determine if the board is as efficient as possible.

"That will give us better information on which to base a decision on whether or not we might cost share a deficit with a board where they have been operating as well as they can," said Groenewegen.

Though the boards control the delivery of services, the government controls the boards' budgets.

Budgets and deficit recovery plans require approval by the Financial Management Board.

Groenewegen said without the accountability to government, the boards would have no incentive to operate within their budgets.

Groenewegen said that if a "board doesn't want to continue to operate, then I as the minister appoint an administrator to run the hospital or the health care region."