NL Health Services will be using $10 million dollars allocated in this year’s budget to address some of the factors contributing to backlogs in the health care system.

CEO Pat Parfrey says that means addressing issues like access to family doctors, emergency rooms, imaging procedures and beds.

The main focus says Parfrey is on access to beds, from which many of the other issues flow.

“All those things are important,” says Parfrey, “and all of them have improved in various types of ways, except the beds; which is really the big issue for us at the present moment.” He says “we have a big risk situation whereby we’ve got 30 people in beds in corridors, and then we have other hospitals across the province who are also over capacity. And being able to repurpose acute-care beds to allow better flow through the health sciences centre, has ripple effects on these other hospitals.”