NDHB staff-related costs was its primary Covid-19 cost to the end of May, totalling $3.9m. Photo / File
NDHB staff-related costs was its primary Covid-19 cost to the end of May, totalling $3.9m. Photo / File
The Northland District Health Board has spent more than $10 million fighting Covid-19 - and rising - with almost half the money coming from the Ministry of Health.
By the end of May, the financial cost of the Covid-19 response from the DHB was $10.6m. Of that, $5.1m had beenfunded by the Ministry of Health with the remaining $5.5m coming from the DHB.
The NDHB's primary Covid-19 cost by the end of May was $3.9m in staff-related costs, which referred to overtime or additional hours worked as a result of Covid-19, and the financial impact of annual leave not taken during that time.
Covid-19 testers on the ground in the Far North. Photo / Supplied
The next highest cost was $600,000 for clinical supplies, which included personal protective equipment and Covid-19 tests.
These costs contributed to a $3.4m deficit for the month of May, $1.5m higher than the NDHB's budgeted deficit of $1.9m for the month. Between July 2019 and May 2020, the NDHB recorded a $17.5m deficit, $6.2m higher than its budgeted deficit of $11.2m - as discussed as last week's NDHB board meeting.
"The May result is disappointing, that's not how we planned our year," NDHB acting chief financial officer Joyce Donaldson said.
"Covid is an extraordinary event that has impacted on every New Zealander, every business and when I look at the May result and I look at the variance against the budget that we set well before the start of the financial year, which was last July, it's explainable as being due to Covid-19."
The NDHB's planned deficit for 2019/20 had been $12.8m, almost $5m less than the current deficit as of May. The NDHB's financial position for the 2019/20 financial year would be detailed at the next board meeting on August 24.
While the budget for the next financial year had not been finalised, Donaldson expected the result for July to be similar to what would be set in the upcoming budget, but she stressed the unpredictability of Covid-19.
With Northland registering just 28 Covid-19 cases out of New Zealand's current 1555, Donaldson said the NDHB had been fortunate its facilities hadn't been stressed by an overwhelming case load and it hadn't had to facilitate managed isolation facilities.
Donaldson said the Ministry of Health was well aware of the financial impact of Covid-19 on the country's DHBs and she believed recording a deficit would not impact future funding.
She said in recent years, all DHBs had been challenged by the level of funding they received. However, Donaldson believed the NDHB was traditionally a good performing DHB financially.
