There will be no further cutbacks in the Sunrise Health Region's 2011/2012 operating budget.
But the concessions made in last year's "belt-tightening" budget - including job losses and staff parking fees - will be maintained to keep costs down, said health region interim CEO Suann Laurent, who presented the new budget at the Regional Health Authority's June 1 meeting.
The $201.5 million budget is a net increase of $15.1 million, or 8.8 percent, over last year's. A $16.5 million gross funding increase is slightly offset by a call to save $1.4 million through improved efficiency in such areas as staff attendance and shared services.
Both revenues and expenses continue to swell for the region; the total budget size is up by more than a third since 2007. But according to Lorelei Stusek, Sunrise's VP of Corporate Services, the increases should level off after this year.
Fully 78 per cent of the budget goes towards compensation of staff.
Several million dollars are allocated for new spending into 14 strategic investments, more details on which are likely to arrive in the coming weeks. These include hiring a security officer, purchasing speech recognition software for doctors' reports, placing public health inspectors on standby, and upgrading laboratories. The largest group of investments is into surgery initiatives, beginning with the orthopedic procedures being offered in Yorkton as of the beginning of June.
Capital funding for equipment-ranging from surgical to janitorial to information technology-has more than doubled, to $751,000.
The budget predicts a $1.9 million surplus at year-end, but capital payments excluded from the regular list of expenses should reduce that figure to zero, said Stusek.
