The new vice president and chief financial officer at the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance is prepared to inherit a nearly $3-million deficit.
"It's going to be a team effort ... trying to rectify the financial challenge," says Jerome Quenneville, who has been serving in this role on an interim basis since November 2016. "Moving into the full-time role just means I've got a longer-term stake in the outcome."
Projections have the deficit jumping to $8-million by 2018-2019 if nothing is done. Quenneville tells BlackburnNews.com the CKHA is currently mapping out a financial plan to finance its mounting debt, noting there's an added incentive.
"Our funding mechanisms for the province actually have a penalty in them, if we don't balance our ongoing operations," says Quenneville, adding with hospitals all across Ontario already bearing the burden of a system under stress, significant pressure is being applied to balance the books.
The savings, he assures, won't come from cutting beds or investments to patient care.
"We're really looking at trying to reduce costs in the areas where we might not be adding value for our patients. That's certainly a challenge ... so we do need to look internally," says Quenneville. "We benchmark ourselves [against] other hospitals, and we've seen that there is the potential to really save that kind of money."