NE LHIN News Release ********************* Health Integration Network (NE LHIN) Board of Directors have reviewed and approved the process for negotiating service accountability agreements with the region’s 25 hospitals.
Health Integration Network (NE LHIN) Board of Directors have reviewed and approved the process for negotiating service accountability agreements with the region’s 25 hospitals.
Over the past several weeks, hospital leaders from area hospitals have been meeting with NE LHIN staff as part of a province-wide Hospital Annual Planning Submission (HAPS) process. The HAPS process details each hospital’s operating plan, service planning, and measurement and evaluation of health services and organizational performance. Hospitals across the region submitted their 2008-2010 HAPS to the NE LHIN on January 31, 2008.
Responsibility for negotiating Hospital Service Accountability Agreements (H-SAA) with local hospitals was transferred from the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care to the NE LHIN in April 2007. LHINs are required under the Ministry LHIN Accountability Agreement to include balanced budgets in agreements with public hospitals. In order for the NE LHIN to flow funding to hospitals on April 1, 2008, hospitals and the NE LHIN must negotiate a board-approved H-SAA by March 31, 2008.
The HAPS and H-SAA process is new to both the NE LHIN and to area hospitals who have been accustomed to working with the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care. The NE LHIN has established a well-defined process for 2008-2010 given that balanced budgets are now mandatory components of H-SAA. The Ministry of Health and Long Term Care has clearly articulated to all 14 LHINs across the province that deficit budget forecasts will not be considered for 2008-2010.
Balanced budgets have not always been the norm for Ontario hospitals. For 2007-2008, North East LHIN hospitals forecast a cumulative deficit of approximately $18.5 million. Such forecasts will not be accepted for the 2008-2010 fiscal years. As noted by the North East LHIN Chair, Mathilde Gravelle Bazinet: “It is incumbent upon the North East LHIN to work closely with all hospitals across the region to ensure that they, and all health service providers, are operating at an optimum level within the confines of the health care system.”
The newly designed process has been shared with all hospitals. It clearly articulates that hospitals in a deficit position must follow due course and submit to the NE LHIN such documents as: a Hospital Community Engagement Strategy; an Improvement Plan, validated by community partners that clearly demonstrates how the hospital will achieve a balanced position by March 31, 2010; and a Performance Monitoring Plan. The new process also calls for transparency and stipulates that all H-SAA required plans, strategies and documents be posted on both the hospital and NE LHIN websites.
For further information, please contact: Cynthia Stables, Senior Corporate Advisor, NE LHIN, (705) 845-1887 or visit the HAPS and/or H-SAA, at www.nelhin.on.ca (under For Health Service Providers).
The North East LHIN is one of fourteen regional networks in Ontario created to plan, integrate and fund local health services. It is responsible for leading the transformation of the local health care system and works closely with over 200 health service providers including hospitals, the North East CCAC, long term care facilities and consumers and their families to integrate health care practices into a model that works for the people of North East Ontario.
