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Health region wraps up, new SHA starts

By Greg Nikkel Patients and front-line workers in health care should not see any change occur, as the provincial Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) replaced all health regions as of Monday, said the outgoing acting CEO and president of the Sun Count
Sun Country board

By Greg Nikkel
Patients and front-line workers in health care should not see any change occur, as the provincial Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) replaced all health regions as of Monday, said the outgoing acting CEO and president of the Sun Country Health Region.
Dean Biesenthal, who is also the vice-president of Human Resources and interim v-p of health facilities, said anyone who is receiving health care or visits any of the health care facilities should not see any change or disruption of service once the SHA took over.
The Saskatchewan Health Authority officially launched on Monday, with the proclamation of The Provincial Health Authority Act. Proclamation of the Act legally transfers the operations and employees of the 12 former Regional Health Authorities to the Saskatchewan Health Authority.
“Launching the Saskatchewan Health Authority is an important step in our journey to transform the provincial health system,” Health Minister Jim Reiter said. “I thank all of our health system partners for their hard work to prepare for this first day of operations. We will continue to work together to better co-ordinate and improve health care services for Saskatchewan people.”
To ensure a safe transition with no impact to frontline care, there are no changes to health care programs, services, facilities or phone numbers. Residents and patients should continue to access care in the same way as they always have.
Sun Country held their last board meeting on Wednesday, and the board officially ceased to exist as of Monday morning, as now the SHA will administer health care services across the province, with local executives now taking on new roles.
Biesenthal noted that for senior executive positions, such as himself, John Knoch (v-p of corporate and finance) Janice Giroux (v-p of community health), and Dr. Dimitri Louvish (v-p of medical), they will continue “business as usual”, only now they will begin to report to the provincial level, “until we’re told otherwise.”
The board chair, Marilyn Charlton, is now the southeast area’s representative on the SHA board, and was not present for the last board meeting as the SHA board has already started meeting, and it was felt there might be a conflict of interest, said acting chair Marilyn Garnier, formerly the vice-chair.
“The launch of the new Saskatchewan Health Authority does not mean that the health services residents depend on will be centralized or reduced,” Rural and Remote Health Minister Greg Ottenbreit said. “Management and services will continue to be available locally, to be responsive to the unique needs of patients and communities.”
Maintaining community engagement and local relationships is a priority for the Saskatchewan Health Authority, and a framework for Community Advisory Networks will be developed in the future. In the meantime, current Community Advisory Networks will continue to operate as usual.
In the final financial report for Sun Country, Knoch said the financial income statement for the period of April 1 to Oct. 31 showed the region operated with a surplus, and the statement of operations showed the region “stayed ahead of where we said we’d be at this point, with recoveries and other revenues that came in that were unbudgeted.”
One extra source of revenue for the health region was “revenue that gets transferred for providing services to patients from out of the province,” said Knoch. In addition, some expenses were down due to unfilled vacancies for jobs in the health region.
Knoch also identified some extra capital expenses that had not been budgeted for, such as extra repairs and maintenance issues in some older facilities, such as upgrades to boilers at some facilities.
“The bottom line is we are still in a slightly favourable position, with just under one day’s operations of surplus,” said Knoch, adding, “We are fairly certain we’ll break even by the end of the fiscal year.” (The fiscal year for health care ends on March 31 each year.)
“From a cash flow perspective, we are meeting our requirements. This is consolidating with other health regions to give them a view of what is happening as a province. At the end of the day, we’re forecasting to break even as of March 31, 2018,” he added, noting Sun Country is in a very favourable position financially, but other health regions are not.
“We provided information as to where some of our cost pressures are,” said Knoch, explaining that for example, one new set of costs are surgeries now being performed at the Weyburn General Hospital, which increases the need for medical and surgical supplies there. So far, he noted, they have been able to absorb those costs.