Windsor Regional Hospital president and CEO David Musyj says he is pleased that the province is injecting more money into community care, which may help overburdened hospitals.
“That’s very positive at a time the hospitals are struggling with respect to taking care of patients, and recognizing that a lot of these patients could be taken care of in the community or at home, and possibly either avoid a hospital admission or once they have been admitted, facilitate a more appropriate discharge back home or into the community,” said Musyj.
The province will inject an addition $260 million into the home health care program to benefit 46,000 people, mostly seniors.
“Investing in community services is, in fact, something that needs to continue and investing more money into those services from a limited budget is helpful,” said Musyj.
Musyj said he wasn’t expecting much news on the health care and hospital front.
“The government have been indicating and have been stating for quite some time that they were not going to be making any further investments in hospitals, other than some growth funding that might pop up from time to time, but there would be no increase in base hospital funding,” said Musyj.
He noted former finance minister Dwight Duncan’s cautious approach in dealing with the deficit in case interest rates move upward.
“The bottom line is the government is still struggling with a rather large operating deficit annually and a rather large debt,” said Musyj.
“And if you do not start addressing that operating deficit in earnest, it will add to the debt. Every year $10 billion of our annual budget is spent just servicing that debt.”
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