Health Sciences North defends new management position

A new job posting at Sudbury's hospital is raising some eyebrows as staff cometo grips with $5 million in recently announced cuts.

• More budget cuts expected at Sudbury's hospital

• Health Sciences North says no nurses will lose their jobs due to budget cuts

Health Sciences North is currently accepting applications for an associate vice-president in clinical transformation and transitions.

Union leaders argue the executiveposting sends a bad message at a tough time.

"It's kind of strange in a budget crunch where they haven't been able to balance their books that they can create a position," said DaveShelefontiuk, who represents clerical and support staff at the hospital.

"If you ask pretty well 80 per cent of the employees in there, they're going to tell you that the hospital's pretty top-heavy ... so, how can they add to that section of management when they're reducing [elsewhere]?"

Changing times

The hospital's vice-presidentdefends the new position, arguing that in a time when the way medical care is delivered is changing dramatically, someone has to oversee those changes.

"One of our key strategic directions ... is to improves the transition as the patient moves from the hospital into the community, and vice versa," said DavidMcNeil, vice-president of patient services, clinical transformation and the chief nursing officer.

"This person's jobs will be to...look at [business] opportunities within the community, whether that be developing services related to primary care, whether that be to move into the home nursing business, looking at assisted living, or [the] retirement home business."

McNeil said there is a hope that the person who fills this role might develop new "revenue streams" for the hospital and in turn, perhaps create a few more jobs.

Short-term pinch

But Kelly Latimer from the union that represents the Ontario Nurses' Association at the hospitalsaid she doesn't understand why this position is being created now.

"When I see the amount of hours that are leaving the bedside, I don't really want to be a patient in the bed because I might not even have the right classification of a worker taking care of me," she said, referring to changes that could see personal support workersdoing work formerly assigned to nurses.

MacNeilreiterated that the hospital iscommitted to patient care, andsaid that "transformation" in the system is affecting everyone not just front-line staff.

"Management's been hit," he said.

"We've reduced about six [full-time equivalencies] overall ... which represents about threeper cent of our management positions. And we've hit about 35[full-time equivalencies] in our front-line staff, which represents about oneper cent, so there's adjustments everywhere."

Regardless of the vision moving forward, a new job in managementmay bea tough sell among staff.

According to the latest "Sunshine List", executives at Health Sciences North were among the province's top-paid employees last year.

More than 170 HSN staff members appeared on the latest salary disclosure report. More than70 of those staff members are in administrative andmanagement roles.