As the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance works to get its finances back in order, more staff cuts are on the horizon. 
CEO Lori Marshall says reducing staff by 38 positions, which works out to approximately 26 full-time and 15 part-time jobs, will help make both campuses more efficient.
“It represents positions in the organization in areas where we know that our level of staffing and our investments have been higher than the required, or where our peers would be, when we look at the volumes of cases that we see in some specific areas,” Marshall says.
The staff cuts would be focused primarily in the Women and Children’s department, emergency, and administrative positions, saving the Alliance about $3-million.
Marshall says some departments, like the ERs, are overstaffed.
“Our physicians have already made some changes in the Emergency Department to more closely match the volumes of when patients arrive,” Marshall explains, “and we’ve also had some investments there in terms of the number of hours that physicians are in the emergency department.”
Clerical staff will also be reduced as the hospital works to introduce an automated or streamlined approach to patient registration.
The savings will be invested into more knee and hip replacements, new equipment, and technology.