HALIFAX – In an effort to cut costs, some health services will soon be merging in Nova Scotia.
The province’s health minister Maureen MacDonald announced Thursday Nova Scotia’s nine District Health Authorities (DHA) and the IWK will be merging administrative services.
The decision comes after the province asked Ernst & Young to analyze the benefit of merging services.
The 171-page report looked into cost saving measures within the administration side of health care and suggested merging 13 services.
Cabinet approved six of those mergers Thursday morning, four of which will be implemented in the next 18 months:
– General administration
– Supply services (purchasing)
– Finance and payroll
– Some laundry consolidation
No Timeframe has been set for when the other two mergers, in IT and Human Resources services, will be implemented.
According to the health minister, once all six mergers are implemented the changes could save up to $52 million annually.
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But, close to 130 jobs will be cut in the process – including up to 20 Vice President and Director positions.
“We will do this in a careful way so that we don’t disrupt patient care and patient services,” MacDonald says.
Union officials aren’t convinced that’s possible.
“That’s ludicrous,” says Karen MacKenzie, president of CUPE local 2525. “I don’t care who you are in the hospital your job effects patient care.”
“Any job loss within the health care system will have a detrimental effect on patient care,” adds Danny Cavanagh, president of CUPE NS.
Every year, DHAs cost the department of health about $1.6 billion.
The mergers are expected to save around $7 million to $9 million in the next 18 months – an amount opposition health critics say is minor.
“This is absolutely nickel and diming on the health care system,” says Liberal health critic Leo Glavene.
“We’re nowhere near where we need to be, we still have 10 CEOs, we still have 72 VPs, well apparently we have 62 VPs, now and we have a whole bunch of directors, you know why not continue to look at that,” Chris d’Entremont, the health critic for the Progressive Conservatives, suggests.
“Essentially this minister and this government is hoping that cuts are going to bring about reform rather than the minister and government directing reform in this province,” d’Entremont says.
One reform, suggested in the Ernst & Young report but rejected by the minister, was to privatize laundry services – a measure that would save almost $3 million a year.
MacDonald says she opposed it because “outsourcing can lead to a deterioration in the wages and benefits of the workers who are currently employed in those areas.”
It’s a move Cavanagh fully supports, saying “we’re happy about that, that’s good to hear, but we’re concerned about what the future holds.”
Cavanagh says his union will be analyzing the report that Ernst and Young gave the government and sharing that analysis with the 3,500 CUPE members who work in acute care.
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