Officials at the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance are waiting for more details on new provincial funding.
Earlier this week, the Ford government announced $1.2 million to help hospitals deal with financial pressures caused by the pandemic.
CKHA CEO Lori Marshall says it could make up for lost revenue from things like parking fees.
“If you think about particularly during the first wave of the pandemic, dramatic reduction in services that we offered, both inpatient and outpatient, huge reduction in visitors,” Marshall explains. “Revenues that we were used to receiving at the hospital, all of a sudden that disappeared and yet the care still needed to be provided, we still needed to have the nursing staff there regardless of the number of patients who were in the hospital.”
Marshall says another part of the funding announcement would deal with working capital and dealing with short-term debt.
“We have had some short-term debt that we’ve continued to carry over the course of the last number of years, we’re hopeful some of that may be remediated by this.”
Marshall says health care funding expected in today’s provincial budget will be more geared towards planning for the year ahead.
