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The Sun Country Health Region (SCHR) released what will likely be its final annual report at the end of August.
The document is always an interesting snapshot of what is happening in the health region, with a look at activity levels for hospitals and health centres, accomplishments for the health region in the previous year, plans for the current year and the future, and a key component for every inquisitive reporter, financial statements.
You can question how much the general public actually cares about whether the health region (and other government agencies) makes money, or how much the CEO makes. But these documents are an important part of transparency.
Those in the public sector likely aren’t too eager for the general public to know how much they made in the 2016-17 fiscal year, but it’s part of public sector life. Taxpayer money pays their wages, so taxpayers ultimately have the right to know how much these people make.
Whether the public actually cares is up to them.
Once the Sun Country Health Region and the other 11 health regions in the province are rolled into the new, monolithic Saskatchewan Health Authority, these regional annual reports will be lost. Instead, we can look forward to one annual report for the entire province, just what we see with Crown corporations.
The information will now reflect healthcare for the province as a whole.
The days of finding out how many kilometres were travelled by ambulances in the Estevan area will likely be over.
There might be some breakdowns for the individual healthcare facilities in the province, after all, the government will want people to know how busy these facilities are for a variety of reasons, including if there are calls to close hospitals or cancel services.
But most of all, we’ll lose the fiscal accountability brought about by these reports. They are a way for the government to be transparent on how much money they’re spending, where they’re spending that money and who is receiving that money.
It’s going to be more difficult to hold the health regions accountable for individual expenses and employee wages now.
Because of these annual reports, people can find out that Marga Cugnet made more than $900,000 in her final year as health region president and CEO, thanks a combination of her base salary, the money she received when she retired, and the vacation time that had to be paid out. Or that Murray Goeres, the former vice-president of health facilities, received more than $550,000, for the reasons listed above.
It might be an infuriating number for some, and the public doesn’t have to like it, but it’s one of the perks of being a top person with a health region who has more than 35 years of experience.
Once the health region amalgamation occurs, that information will be much tougher to find. Those wages will get lost in a long list of workers making more than $50,000 per year.
Furthermore, the highest-paid employees will be working out of the head office in Saskatoon. There won’t be executives in the new mega health authority working out of Estevan or Weyburn.
It’s yet another thing that will be lost later this year when 12 health authorities become one.
