North Bay hospital gets much-needed COVID-19 financial help

There’s more bail-out money coming for the North Bay Regional Health Centre as it continues to look at extra costs created by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The $1.9 million, which comes from Queen’s Park, will go directly to the hospital’s front-line response to reimburse the facility for COVID-19-related costs.

Since March 2020, hospital staff has conducted close to 73,000 COVID-19 tests at the assessment centre.

"Just running the assessment centre alone is costing us. It’s not something we would have otherwise budgeted for or planned for," said Michael Lowe, a hospital board member.

Lowe estimates the cost of operating the assessment centre is in the millions of dollars.

The province already helped with $1.8 million to help offset costs for the first quarter of the year and now, Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli has announced a similar amount for the second quarter.

"This group of men and women have gone above and beyond all of the duties to support the patients. They have put the patient at the centre of every decision they’ve made," Fedeli said.

 Lowe said the morale among hospital staff is good.

"We want to put these COVID pandemic days behind us… all of the extra work that’s required when you have COVID patients in terms of caring for them," he said.

Administrators told CTV News hospitals across Ontario have been seeing their finances bogged down from having to supply staff with extra personal protective equipment, the vaccine distribution, and beds used for patients with COVID-19.

"Our health care is so important and there’s absolutely nothing more important than the safety and health of our families," said Fedeli. "This is just to help pay them back for the money used out of their operating budget and we also increased their operating budget this year by $2.4 million."

They said the new funding will give them some much-needed stability as it looks to the future of a post-pandemic world.

"It is something we’re actually planning for," he said. "What is life going to be like in the post-COVID pandemic and how that’s going to affect our service deliveries and how we deal with patients?"

When the pandemic first rocked hospitals, Fedeli said the Ontario government gave over $570 million to reimburse overwhelmed facilities.