Friday 2 October 2020Media release2 minutes to read
The DHB welcomes the government’s confirmation of $180M of equity support
Please see below for a statement to be attributed to Peter Bramley, Acting Chief Executive, Canterbury DHB
Canterbury DHB welcomes the government’s confirmation of $180M of equity support.
The purpose of the equity injection is to maintain the DHB’s financial liquidity. The equity support will meet the DHBs forecast cashflow funding needs through to the end of the current 2020/21 financial year.
Canterbury DHB works closely with the Ministry of Health to manage its liquidity and ensure that there is sufficient cashflow to cover the expenditure incurred from the delivery of its services. As with most organisations these expenditure items cover a range of things such as payments to suppliers, heating and lighting for buildings and staffing costs etc.
It is important to note that the $180M equity support simply enables us to keep paying people and our bills. While we welcome this cash injection it does not change the need to address our ongoing financial sustainability and the draft forecast deficit for 2020/21.
As a DHB, we are working towards financial sustainability.
The DHB’s deficit reduction work started last year when we established a number of Taskforces to look at how we could significantly reduce our costs to improve our financial position. At the end of June 2020 we had already saved $12.9m million for the 2019/20 financial year. Much of this was achieved without significant disruption to how we carry out our day to day work.
The DHB’s current Accelerating Our Future programme of work builds on this and is based on our most recent draft 2020/21 annual plan, and looks at how the DHB can operate more sustainably for the long term and achieve the $56.9m savings plan approved by the Board in August this year.
It looks at a range of options available to the DHB to improve operational efficiency and is focused on initiatives that will deliver both a quality and sustainable health service that builds on the strengths of our integrated health system. This plan has been structured to achieve targeted savings with the least possible impact on patient care and to achieve our broader three-year plan to break even.
ENDS
Page last updated: 17 April 2023
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