Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare is making progress in tackling their deficit prior to a provincial deadline.
President and CEO Bill Marra provided an update on Wednesday following the Board of Directors meeting, and says the board approved an interim budget for the fiscal year 2026-27.
Marra says in 2025 the Ontario government asked hospitals to plan for long-term stability as part of a responsible fiscal management and system planning. As part of that planning, all hospitals must work towards eliminating operating deficits by March 31, 2028.
Hôtel-Dieu operates with a $140-million budget, and in April 2025, the hospital was facing an $8.2-million deficit, but Marra says as of today that deficit has been cut in half to just over $4-million.
Marra says the savings came from a range of internal changes, such as holding some non-union management positions vacant, restructuring the cafeteria services, and finding efficiencies in pharmacy and supply costs.
He adds that during this time, these measures have not affected patient care, and there's been no layoffs of frontline clinical staff, no cuts to services, and no reduction in beds or outpatient programs.
Marra says they've hired a third-party consultant to complete a full review.
"We're now identifying a number of areas that require further operational review, and it is our goal to have that report completed by the end of June so that we can develop strategies for the Board of Directors to contemplate in September around some decisions that have to be made. So, we're going to look at administrative costs, cost of security, staffing models, anything that is flagged in the benchmarking."
He says restructuring the cafeteria services saved the hospital a ton of money, and no jobs were impacted.
"We have fully automated, 24/7 food supplier through a private sector partner that sources all of the food locally from a number of local vendors," says Marra. "So, that model alone saved us literally several hundreds of thousands of dollars because we no longer require the personnel to do it... it's all done through a private sector partner. Again, emphasizing no job losses."
Marra says the current staff have stepped up to address the vacant positions.
"There's about half a dozen, maybe eight positions, they're all management positions... they're all non-union management positions. And what we've been asking our people to do right now is take on more responsibility. We don't know if this is sustainable in the long term, but our non-union folks, our managers have stepped up, taken on more responsibilities, taken on a number of extra departments."
A full plan is expected to go before the board in September, giving the hospital about 18 months to eliminate the remaining deficit.
Hôtel-Dieu employs roughly 1,300 staff, and has about 100 credentialed physicians.