The province has handed over $10.5 million to the North Bay Regional Health Centre for the 2024-25 year to deliver faster, more connected care to people in Nipissing.
“Today’s increased provincial investment to the North Bay Regional Health Centre will help ensure people can connect to the care they need, close to home,” said MPP Vic Fedeli during Thursday's media event at the hospital.
”Our government is committed to ensuring that everyone in our region has confidence in and access to the best healthcare available.”
Fedeli says the one-time funding allocation will support the hospital to improve emergency department length-of-stay targets while the HIRF funding will help health system partners like the North Bay Regional Health Centre to address urgent infrastructure needs.
Paul Heinrich, President and CEO of the North Bay Regional Health Centre says the news today is very stabilizing.
"It has taken care of a big challenge and it's ensured that the cash on hand will be in good shape over the coming years," said Heinrich.
“We are grateful on behalf of our healthcare team and the patients of the many communities we serve, that we are receiving the full amount of the announced base increase for hospitals. We will continue to work with the Province of Ontario to ensure our financial position is stable and sufficient going forward.”
The funding breakdown includes the following:
- $9,173,600 in annualized base funding representing a 4.1% budget increase
- $1,294,300 in One-Time Funding allocations
- $210,000 in Hospital Infrastructure Renewal Funding (HIRF)
However, Heinrich admits accessing funding for the facility from the province can be a problem because the regional health centre has two unique healthcare designations.
"It is frustrating to me because our community doesn't even understand but this is both a large community hospital and a regional, Northeast Region, regional specialty provider of mental health," noted Heinrich during the Thursday media conference.
Heinrich says 215 of their 466 beds are mental health-specific and are intended to serve the whole region.
"Many people in our own community don't realize that we have all these services that we've always had and what actually occurs under the Public Hospitals Act is a hospital can only be classified as like a large community, an academic, a small hospital, mental health Specialty hospital. So we are a unique beast in that we're both a mental health specialty regional provider and a large community hospital, and you can only choose one category, so unfortunately for us, our category is large community and what has happened over the last number of years is mental health, specialty hospitals, small hospitals and academic hospitals all got differential increases in their base over a number of years, and that actually created kind of accounting glitch, that's caused the problem," he continued.
"The province is well aware of this issue. And, in fact, we, we have submitted quite some time ago, some documentation. And that was also supported by Ontario Health, which is, is our overseeing agency. So I. I'm counting our blessings today."
The funding is expected to help hospitals keep emergency departments open, support inflationary or other wage pressures and reduce wait times for diagnostic imaging and surgical procedures, including MRI, CT, cardiac, stroke, neuro-services, orthopedics, and cataracts so that people can connect to care faster.
