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VICTORIA – Starting in the new year, B.C.’s health authorities will examine the feasibility of providing greater shared services with the goal of maximizing available financial resources to direct patient care, Health Minister George Abbott said today.
“In order to ensure that health-care dollars are focused on direct patient care, we are continually seeking ways of reducing overhead costs and duplication in non-clinical services across health authorities,” said Abbott. “The health authorities will build upon initiatives achieved since 2001 with this new process of a feasibility study and producing business cases to determine more effective means of delivering a range of non-clinical services.”
The feasibility study and business cases will be conducted by a new Health Authority Shared Services organization, which will build upon a number of cross-authority collaborative initiatives currently underway within many of these areas. Should these initiatives proceed, accumulated net savings would be redistributed to the health authorities to enhance patient care and clinical services.
The Health Authority Shared Services organization will be an independent organization reporting to a board comprised of the six health authority CEOs and the chief operating officer of the Ministry of Health. Two external members may also be appointed. The board will be chaired initially by Lynda Cranston, the CEO of the Provincial Health Services Authority.
“We value the work of our employees, and will ensure that information will be made available in a timely way,” said Cranston. “Much work must be done before any specific plans are developed and before any potential impact on employees can be identified. We believe the shared services organization will provide new opportunities to leverage our collective buying power, expertise and experience, leading to increasing sustainability of the health-care system.”
The non-clinical services under consideration are common products procurement, warehousing and logistics, payroll/transactional human resources, and information technology (including data centre, desktop and contact centre/help desk).
“In 2006, we engaged with our health-care partners in the unions and associations through a range of labour agreements to build new and innovative ways of delivering health-care services that provide direct patient benefits,” said Abbott. “We want to continue to work with these partners in this new initiative to provide even further benefit to patients and the taxpayers of British Columbia.”
Health authorities are in the very early days of establishing this organization. This information is being released now as government is in the midst of good faith bargaining with the Facilities Bargaining Association. Planning around this initiative has matured to the point that government is obliged, as a part of its commitment to good faith bargaining, to disclose plans around the establishment of this organization.
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Communications Director Ministry of Health 250 952-1889 250 920-8500 (cell) |
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For more information on government services or to subscribe to the Province’s news feeds using RSS, visit the Province’s website at www.gov.bc.ca. |
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