Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Journalist

In an update to a story THE EQUITY published last week, the president and CEO of Outaouais’ healthcare network Marc Bilodeau has offered minor clarity on how CISSSO will cut back its predicted spending by $90 million before Mar. 2025, the end of this fiscal year, to meet the province’s demand that all regional health authorities balance their budgets.

In an interview with THE EQUITY last week, Bilodeau indicated that as home care, the hiring of agency staff, and paying overtime hours are all expensive practices for CISSSO, it would be focusing on finding efficiencies in these departments in its attempt to balance its budget.

“Based on our initial assessment, we’re probably providing more [home care] than is required so we need to step back a bit. We’ve already seen a reduction in our hours of home care without seeing a negative impact,” Bilodeau said.

“The other area is reducing the cost of our human resources by looking at how we can bring agency personnel back as employees. It basically costs double to have agency personnel compared to regular employees. If I can hire them back, then I suddenly save a lot of money.”

Bilodeau also noted the network pays a lot of money in overtime hours, which he believes can be reduced by dialing in scheduling practices.

“If we capitalize more on regular time, we’re going to save quite a bit of money.”

Bilodeau emphasized that these practices will be applied differently to different hospitals and healthcare centres, taking into account the nuances of each local reality.

“I’m going to need to monitor the impact on access and quality and if there is one, I’m going to need to stop,” he said. “I don’t know yet what the line is going to be.”