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Prairie North playing waiting game with provincial government

Apr 28, 2016 | 6:00 AM

Recent comments by Premier Brad Wall about potential changes to health administration in the upcoming budget are making their way through the Prairie North Health Region (PNHR).

On Monday. April 25, Premier Wall hinted public sectors should look at reducing financial amounts in administration in favor of frontline staff or savings. During the election, the Sask Party made a campaign promise to annually cut administration costs by $7.5 million.

PNHR CEO David Fan said the comments caught the region off guard.

“I must say it came as a surprise to us. So at this point we’re really not sure what that means and what is being signalled by government,” he said.

The region is also in the process of preparing its own budget and until the provincial budget is released, Fan said they are going to have to make some ‘high level assumptions’ as to what it will look like.

“We will not know what the details of funding allocations are going to be for 2016 to 2017 until June 1. It’s partly a concern for us in the sense that time is ticking by as far as this fiscal year is concerned,” he said.

Also during the campaign the Progressive Conservatives made waves by announcing they wanted to get rid of all the health regions in the province. Wall didn’t specify whether it would be something the Sask Party would be looking at, however Fan admitted the health region will need to wait to see what Wall and the Sask Party do.

“We don’t know what that means and I guess time will tell. There’s not a whole lot we can do at this point other than to wait for the government’s determination,” he said.

mkelly@jpbg.ca