Discussions are going on around the table with the Thompson Regional Hospital District regarding capital plans, and taxpayers’ dollars.
Board Chair Mike O’Reilly says one of the big topics of discussion with the board is the need for a three to five-year capital plan.
Currently, he says the board only gets the capital plan six to twelve months ahead of time.
“It’s difficult to plan around that and it is something our board is saying loud and clear, but I’m also hearing from all corners of the province who are saying the same thing,” he said.
“There’s a want and a need for change throughout the entire province, which is, you know, something that that I think we’ll be able to approach and what we expect, you know if we’re going to be putting our tax dollars first.”
Across the province, O’Reilly explains hospital boards have to start changing their approach with health authorities on expectations with taxpayer dollars.
“There is a lot on the table when you have 30 board members, when we talked about the Merritt hospital, the taxpayers in Kamloops, and everybody up through Clearwater, Barriere, and Ashcroft paid for the upgrades and we should be equally concerned.”
“I think for us to sit back and say ‘oh this is the way it has always been done’ isn’t really an appropriate approach moving forward,” added O’Reilly.
On top of that, O’Reilly says now that the hospital board has been presented that Interior Health is starting to work on a business plan for a Cancer Care Centre in Kamloops, he says there is a need for more provincial funding.
“We are being presented with a plan to start a business plan, with a cost to the taxpayers of the Regional Hospital District; which frankly, to me, is backward,” stated O’Reilly.
“For us to be paying for something BC Cancer should be paying for makes no sense; to put that on the back of the taxpayers here, I don’t understand what the rationale is for that and it is something I will be asking.”
As part of a post-budget media blitz, BC’s Finance Minister Katrine Conroy tells NL News her government’s pledge for a Cancer Care Center in Kamloops will be fulfilled.
Conroy’s comments come following the BC Government’s 10-year, 440 million-dollar plan announced ahead of the budget to expand cancer in the province; however, the Kamloops Cancer Care Centre was not included as a line item in that plan.
