Shared Health ends contracts with vendors to save $7.5M

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Shared Health has ended contracts with more than 50 external vendors, another measure to cut costs after slashing two dozen administrative jobs in May.

Contracts including administrative support, software implementation and project management have either ended or been taken on by Shared Health staff, CEO Lanette Siragusa said Tuesday.

“Shared Health has identified efficiencies within its administrative branch that are allowing funds to be reinvested in high priority areas that support our clinical teams in the delivery of patient care,” she said in an email.

The change is expected to save Shared Health about $7.5 million annually.

Some of the vendors were providing service from outside Manitoba.

Administrative restructuring in May eliminated 24 jobs, including some senior management. Out of those staff, 10 accepted severance packages and the remaining were shuffled into other roles at Shared Health.

Siragusa said those cuts would save Shared Health about $1 million, which would be reinvested into clinical teams and patient care.

In February, Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara wrote a mandate letter to Shared Health board chair Dr. Brian Postl, asking that the organization focus resources on front-line staff “rather than the excessive health-care bureaucracy.”

Shared Health spent $118 million on administration last year, according to its 2022-23 annual report, about double what it had spent the year before.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca