One good way to save money is to cut administrative bloat and salaries. Senior management of most large organizations is grossly overpaid. Board members show up for a few hours of work a year (as an additional job) and get paid what many smarter and harder working people get paid for an entire year. Business leaders always leave a sour taste in my mouth!

So Crusty'ss Governments priorities...

1. Increase Salaries to their Team than cut back when it goes Public to much Disgust,

2. Cut Health Care to those who can least Defend against it, the Mentally Ill and Handicapped a lot of them Children and the young,

3. But $565 Million for a Leaky Tarp Roof A-Ok!

4. Subsidies to Oil & Gas Companies so far this Year $120 Million Announced but a lot more back room Deals,

5. BC Hydro Guaranteed Profit Power Contract in the BILLIONS to Private Corporations to be paid for by you on your Hydro Bill Increases & User Fees everywhere.

The Wheel Chair Fee / Tax was just the start!

The Neo-Conservative Lying BC Liberals sticking it to us British Columbians for 12+ Years.

The shortfalls in frontline services in public health are due to bureaucratic bloat & mismanagement. Vancouver Coastal could save millions eliminating the reimbursement for parking given to staff, eliminating "retreats" to resorts for "problem solving," eliminating bonuses for bureaucrats and eliminating every position created within the bureaucracy over the last decade. Bureaucratic bloat consumes millions a year but most of you believe it is the government or unions who are to blame. Why have VCH managers been given pay raises on an annual basis whilst clinicians in some fields have gone a decade without a pay raise? Why are VCH bonuses given to bureaucrats based upon their own analysis of their work? Nobody dares touch the bureaucracy or call them on their greed because nobody has the power to curtail how they spend our money.

G - I have no idea where you get your information from. Clinicans are nurses and as such, come under BCNU - they make good money (I am one, so I know). Also, there are no parking reimbursements to staff - Impark gives a staff reduction, but we pay just the same - and VCH makes money from Impark.(Note: in Mission the city decided there would be no charge for parking within their city and passed a bylaw to state this - Fraser Health is not permitted to charge staff for parking in Mission) And I know many managers and they have not gotten a pay increase in 3 years.

Here is where part of the problem lies: the government negotiators agreed to not only a wage increase but to extending the work week for nurses as well - the 36 hr work week since 1994 has now gone back to 37.5 hrs. (NOTE: the 36 hr work week came out of the recognition that a majority of nurses in BC would be retiring within the next 15 years so this was a retention strategy - those nurses did not get younger, so I suspect the motive is to drive those senior nurses (at the top of the pay scale)out of the system by making their work life just a little bit tougher. And don't be fooled into thinking that senior nurses retiring creates positions for new nurses. Go to any of the health authority job posting and you will find this: very few permanent position for nurses - just many many casual positions, forcing nurses to work in unstable environments as they jump from facility to facility for a day here a day there - but the list of excluded (management) positions is long and all permanent positions. This group are so much easier to kick out of the system without a moment's notice, so having a permanent, excluded position is a dicey place to be.

This pay increase (not necessary and not requested by BCNU members - we actually want to keep our jobs, thank you) plus the longer work week has placed an additional financial burden on all of the health authorities (what is happening in VCH is happening everywhere)that were already dealing with a deficit. The kick in the head to all British Columbians is that the government agreed to this additional cost and then told the health authorities that there would be no funds to accommodate it; health authorities have to simply "suck it up" and figure it out on their own.
(to be continued)

The health authorities are responding to the inflated deficit in a variety of ways - but at the end of the day services across all of the health care sectors are being adversely affected - the already failing health care system in BC is only going to become more broken.

Nurses, dietitians, social workers, occupational and physical therapists, licensing officers - they are either getting their hours cut or having their positions eliminated entirely (I am one who has been eliminated, so I know.) If you thought the health care you receive now is inadequate, "you ain't seen nothin' yet.."
and before you go and say there are too many nurses anyway, consider this:
It is definitely possible to restructure services - but success only comes if the entire program is re-designed. Simply cutting positions and leaving the programs and the expected outcomes the same is not only ineffective, it is lunacy. This is what is happening in many areas of health care - the expectations (of the public and the employers) will remain the same, but there will be fewer human resources available to respond. To coin a Pink phrase - "it not bent, it's broken".

I'm one of the lucky ones - I actually have gotten a job as part of a team working in an area where a re-design of health care services delivery is actually being done. I believe the intent is for this program to spread across all sectors - I just hope it isn't too little, much too late.