With the Interior Health Authority (IHA) facing a $30 million budget shortfall, IHA CEO Murray Ramsden said IHA is looking at every cost cutting measure they can to get their books to balance.

Cost cutting measures will come in the way of reductions in IHA's administrative departments and by finding more efficiencies in their support areas.

Ramsden said there are a series of administrative positions that have already been identified for cuts.

"There are definitely people that are leaving the employment of Interior Health," he said.

Ramsden said half the positions have already been dealt with as they were vacant and they've implemented a hiring freeze.

Ramsden added that cost cutting measures will also have to be implemented in IHA's clinical areas.

According to Ramsden the Kootenay Boundary region is already over its budget in this area and the year is only three quarters of the way through.

Ramsden said in order for the Kootenay Boundary area to remain on budget, patients may face longer wait times for non-threatening surgery.

"If they're (clinical area) running over (budget) we have to find ways to work with them to bring their paid hours back into budget," said Ramsden.

"The key to us balancing comes back to our clinical areas with clinical areas looking to be as efficient as they can and to stay within the resources that they had for last year," he added.

As for further budget shortfalls in the coming years, Ramsden said that is something that is hard to predict as a lot of it depends on how the economy shapes up.

"My personal view is that this is not just a one year phenomenon, we're going to have some challenging times for the next couple of years, two, three years ahead, it could even go longer," he said.

Another cost cutting measure IHA is taking to address the current budget shortfall is looking at the amount of overtime they pay out.

Last year alone IHA paid over $25 million in overtime, this according to Ramsden.

"If we could reduce our overtime by 50 per cent that saves significant dollars and at the same time provides the same level of care," he said.

Ramsden said in order to reduce the amount of overtime paid out, IHA has to make better use of casual workers so full time employees don't incur overtime.

"It's very much a bottom up approach. We're looking for ideas and particularly looking for each of our programs, each of our services to look at how they're doing the work; what are the resources they have and to be as efficient and effective as possible so that we can serve as many people as we can," he said.

Another cost cutting measure IHA has introduced is a voluntary programs for its employees to work four day weeks.

Ramsden said thus far a little over 100 employees have taken advantage of this program which has, at first glance, appeared to have saved IHA $175,000.