Sudbury doctors say Health Sciences North budget cuts will affect most vulnerable patients

A group of Sudbury doctors took over the podium at Health Sciences North's annual general meeting on Thursday night to speak out against losing a full third of their budget.

The doctors are part of the hospitalist program which serves patients who do not have a family physician or whose physicians do not have hospital admitting privileges.

These people are some of the most vulnerable patients in the hospital, according to Dr. Caroline Mailloux, the chief of family medicine and lead hospitalist at HSN.

"They are called unattached or orphaned patients, so these are patients that have no family doctors and probably never will because of multiple reasons ... including poverty, drugs, addiction, homelessness, the frail elderly," Mailloux said.

'No one will want to take these patients'

There are currently seven hospitalists on staff at HSN each day, but Mailloux says that number will go down to five when the budget cut takes effect.

She predicts the volume of patients the doctors are able to see daily will drop from 115 to 75.

"The hospital will go into chaos because internal medicine won't be able to support the volume, the surgeons won't be able to support the volume," Mailloux said.

"The emerge will be in crisis because no one will want to take these patients."

She adds that half of the 33 per cent cut will also come directly from the hospitalists' income.

Hospital says it's listening to concerns

HSN CEO Dominic Giroux says although hospitalists play a key role in providing frontline patient care, the hospital has had to make some tough financial choices to reduce its $11.1 million deficit.

"We're definitely listening to their concerns and we've committed to bringing back those concerns to the finance committee and the board of directors," Giroux said. "That will likely be in September."

Mailloux says it will be too late, however, because the hospitalists are already planning their schedule around the cuts, which take effect on September 6.

She hopes HSN will come to a table before then to find another solution.

"We'd be happy to take a direct cut of even 10 per cent to our income and come up with solutions to find money elsewhere, or distribute the cuts more evenly or to other groups of physicians who haven't been cut such as psychiatry."

The hospital's board of directors recently approved a budget for the 2018-2019 fiscal year, which includes a reduction in outside clinical departments by $6.9 million and a reduction in the capital budget for renovations, equipment and information technology by 23 per cent.

HSN is also looking to eliminate 76 full time unionized jobs. Those cuts have been put on hold until a third party review commissioned by the North East Local Health Integration Network is completed on June 30.