Southern Health Sante Sud, a region serving nearly 200,000 residents, held its 4th annual Public Meeting last night in Winkler.

One of five Regional Health Authorities in the province, Southern Health Santé Sud serves 20 Rural Municipalities, seven Municipalities, four cities, four towns and one village.

The fourth year after a forced amalgamation, CEO Kathy McPhail says teams are starting to gel.

"It wasn't always smooth," she says. "Sometimes it's consensus, and you're on the same page, and sometimes it's agree to disagree until we can find a route that gets us to a common point."

At the meeting, the RHA presented a small surplus of $348,484 on an over $338 million budget for 2015-2016. Board Chair Guy Levesque explains a balanced budget is a herculean effort as a region with tremendous population growth.

"That is the biggest challenge the board has because we are the area with the biggest growth in needs... and then we also don't get more money every year," he says, adding over 80 percent of the budget is staffing.

However, thanks to careful spending and a finance team painstakingly breaking spending down item by item, the Board has been able to post a surplus for the past four years.

"They go right to the penny," he says. "It's unbelievable."

Dr. Michael Rutledge, recently named Medical Officer of Health with Sante Sud taking over for Dr. Shelley Buchan, spoke of creating a shift in how we view healthcare. He says it's time to focus on preventing disease and injury, rather than only viewing healthcare as a reactionary tool.

"If we could make that the same kind of priority we invest into treating people after they've had that injury or illness I think we'd be much further ahead," Rutledge says. "And I think that's what people want."