The CEO of Chatham-Kent Health Alliance (CKHA) is extremely pleased with a funding boost announced by the province to support small and medium-sized hospitals.
Chatham-Kent Health Alliance received $1.73 million.
CKHA CEO Lori Marshall said most of the extra money will go to improving the emergency department, ambulatory care, and in-patient services but some of the cash will be used to hire more nurses during the flu season when the extra beds are open.
"We are also pursuing surge strategies. So, we will be looking at increasing the number of beds we operate over the flu season and we'll be hiring staff for that," said Marshall.
Marshall said CKHA is thankful for this government’s recognition that medium-sized hospitals have faced long-standing challenges with funding models and operational pressures.
"You have to have a certain amount of base staffing. You have to be able to provide the services to the community when they need them and when you are a bit smaller sized, it is more difficult to do that in a very cost-effective manner," she added.
Marshall said smaller hospitals have worked on this for a long time to address the increasing costs of doing business.
"Every year we see escalation of our costs and that does relate to inflationary pressures of cost of supplies and things like collective agreements and those kinds of things,' Marshall said.
Health Minister Christine Elliott said 90 hospitals would receive about $68-million this year.
