The President and CEO of Quinte Health Care is calling for more funding to their four hospitals.
“We’ve long known that the funding formula the Ministry came out with is not able to deal with multiple hospital systems, especially in rural populations,” says Mary Clare Egberts, the President and CEO of QHC. That’s why they brought in a consultant to get an independent opinion on funding levels. Egberts says that while she can’t share the full results yet, she can say that the report says that a “significant base adjustment” is needed to keep QHC’s current services going.
QHC has four hospitals across two Counties. North Hastings Hospital in Bancroft, Belleville General Hospital and Trenton Memorial Hospital in Hastings County and Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital in Prince Edward County.
“Hospital funding is very complex,” Egberts says. While she currently thinks QHC is under-funded, she does complement the work the Ministry of Health has done. She says she believes the Ministry has done everything they can to spread around the limited resources they have evenly across the Province. “I give the ministry credit, they’ve done their best,” Egberts says. She added that the Ministry understands that the current funding formula isn’t able to meet the needs of every hospital across the Province.
Egberts says that the information in the report will provide what the Ministry needs to bring QHC up to where they need to be in terms of funding.