The board of directors at Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare has approved a $1.4-million deficit for this fiscal year, but a plan to mitigate costs needs provincial approval.
Vice-president of external/government affairs, planning and development, Bill Marra says this year's budget is based on funding the campus historically received when it was part of Windsor Regional Hospital. Now that it's a standalone facility, expenses have gone up.
"That budget was approved with the understanding that we would undertake a sort of a benchmarking process, assess our operation and see what we needed to do to deal with that."
Marra says it'll be up to the province whether to approve the deficit.
"They (will) either advise yes, we can accept this given the mitigation strategies that you are embarking upon. Or, they can send it back and say no, you've got to do a better job."
While service and job cuts are not on the table right now, Marra says the hospital will look at staff sick time and overtime.
Part of the problem, says Marra is the hospital receives a lower per diem rate for alternate level care patients compared to other patients in the hospital. Recently, Windsor Regional Hospital blamed its projected $8.5-million deficit on the provincial funding formula.
"I would suggest that if you had this conversation with hospitals across the province of Ontario, they'll all say the same thing," he says. "It's a matter of transitioning them to more appropriate accommodations. There was some degree of relief last year when the new facility was opened here in Windsor, the Schlegel Village. However, it continues to be an issue."
Marra says the projected deficit for the hospital's 2015/16 fiscal year could be $5.8-million.
