Health board to save $1 million on new First Air deal

SEAN MCKIBBON
Nunatsiaq News

OTTAWA — A new deal with First Air could save the Baffin Regional Health and Social Services Board $1 million a year.

The board has signed a preferred service provider agreement with the airline. The agreement basically says the board will fly all of its patients on First Air unless the airline can’t provide the service.

“It’s a win-win. We know how much we are getting and this will give them as much flexibility to find savings as possible,” said First Air’s vice president of marketing and communications, Jim Ballingal.

With medical travel costs rising steadily over the last three years from $5.1 million in 1997 to a projected $7 million this year, finding ways of cutting costs was essential, said Jarvis Hoult, the Baffin board’s CEO.

“Of course we are also doing everything in our power to reduce medical travel,” Hoult said.

He says the agreement applies to all medical travel for patients and authorized escorts, authorized board staff, duty travel, and air freight.

Other benefits include First Air waiving “cubing tariffs” on cargo freight, the installation of a computerized booking system at the Baffin Regional Hospital, and no charge for shipping country food to patients staying in Ottawa at Rotel.

Also thrown in are 17 free, round-trip tickets to Ottawa for board members to attend joint meetings with the Ottawa Health Services Network Inc. (OHSNI) every year. OHSNI co-ordinates health care for Baffin patients staying in Ottawa.

“We’re proud to be able to give that back to the community,” said Ballingal.

While he wouldn’t say what the agreement, which expires February, 2002, was worth to First Air, he admitted that Canadian North’s return to the northern market was a factor in negotiations.

“The market in the north is very thin,” he said.

The agreement does not cover medevac services, but Ballingal says his airline would love to have a crack at providing them to the board. The board currently has a medevac contract with Kenn Borek.