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This article was published 14/4/2017 (1252 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority says it will initially save more than $30 million from a hospital reorganization plan unveiled with great fanfare a week ago.

The revelation has led to accusations by the provincial NDP that the main driver of hospital reform is not better patient care, but the desire to save money.

The Pallister government and the WRHA were vague when asked initially about the financial implications of closing three city hospital emergency departments and reorganizing several other hospital services in Winnipeg. They simply maintained they believed savings would be achieved in time.

Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen said the hospital changes were being carried out not to save money but to improve patient care.

Yet, the minister and the health region had more precise financial information at their fingertips than they let on at the time of the announcement.

The Health Department directed the WRHA in mid-February to find $83 million in annual budgetary savings. It demanded a breakdown by the end of the fiscal year on March 31.

A summary of that plan released to media outlets this week showed that $30.9 million (of the $83 million) is to come through hospital reorganization.

In the legislature on Thursday, NDP health critic Matt Wiebe pressed the government about the newly revealed savings.

"The minister (Goertzen) has revealed his real motives, which are to find cuts even if they come at the expense of patient care and community health," Wiebe charged.

Goertzen replied that the government and the WRHA were merely instituting hospital reforms recommended by a consultant — David Peachey — who had been hired by the previous NDP administration.

Under the hospital plan announced April 7, Concordia, Victoria and Seven Oaks hospitals will lose their ER departments. Victoria and Seven Oaks will see their ERs converted to round-the-clock urgent care centres — for patients requiring care for serious but not life-threatening injuries and illnesses.

Goertzen said it’s become apparent that spending more money on hospital ERs is not the answer to solving the problem of long waits for service. Winnipeg has had some of the longest ER waits in the country.

"I only wish that pouring money into the ER system was the solution to the problem because there wouldn’t be a problem anymore," the minister said in the legislature. "In fact, I asked my department the amount of money that had been poured into the ER system in the last number of years, and they said over $100 million. And yet the problem got worse each and every year."

"I assume that that was the reason why the former NDP (government) commissioned the Peachey report," Goertzen added, "because money wasn’t the solution to the problem."

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca