People in the Windsor area should brace themselves for cuts to hospital services.

A new provincial funding formula means Windsor Regional Hospital will get less money.

Work on deciding which services to cut is already underway.

Windsor Regional Hospital's out-patient services may cease to exist in the future, according to CEO David Musyj.

"We're an acute care hospital. We have to focus on our in-patients," said Musyj. "Everything else is pretty much up for discussion because if it's an out-patient procedure than the discussion is why does it need to take place in a hospital."

Every department is on the cost-cutting chopping block, Musyj said, and layoffs are not out of the question.

The hospital's board of directors met in a closed-door session to review the latest financial situation.

Windsor Regional expects to see its budget cut by $4.4 million by the end of 2013.

The hospital currently gets $220 million from the Ministry of Health, so that reduction is equal to about two per cent.

Hospitals punished by new funding model

Musyj said the new funding formula punishes Windsor's hospitals because the area's population is not growing.

"Even though our seniors are growing, they're not growing in numbers as large as the rest of the population across Ontario," said Musyj. "We're not growing the children population as much as the rest of Ontario."

But he said the demand for services is growing, even though the population is staying the same.

"The utilization of health care services is higher in Windsor-Essex than it is for a population of this size [in Ontario] with these health issues. We over utilize the system," said Musyj.

Areas such as Toronto and London will see their hospital funding go up.

Musyj said it's hard to fault the province for basing funding on population.

"I mean if your population isn't growing, the argument would be the you don't need to be providing the amount of services you're providing," said Musyj.

He said he saw this new funding model coming four years ago.

"We didn't know the scope and the size of it until now because we don't have access to the formulas," said Musyj.

The hospital is looking at ending services that are now offered in private clinics.

Administration will have to dig deeper than they normally do to balance the books, Musyj said.

"The changes we are going to be proposing now are probably going to be fundamentally bigger because the number we're dealing with is fundamentally bigger," said Musyj.

The services that will be reduced or banished all together won't be known until December, he said.