A proposal to chart the future of the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance services in Wallaceburg will be unveiled April 19 but at this point it’s anyone’s guess what that will contain.
A crowd of 100 people attended the monthly meeting of the Sydenham District Hospital Board at the UAW hall in Wallaceburg after a rumour swept the community that the hospital’s emergency department would be closing shortly.
Conrad Noel, SDH board vice-chair, said the emergency department is not closing, with the number one reason being the Chatham campus can’t handle the volume.
Alliance CAO Colin Patey said the administration is preparing a proposal for a $10 million investment to replace Sydenham Hospital but its contents haven’t been finalized.
Wallaceburg councillor and former SDH board chair Jeff Wesley asked if the proposal would contain an emergency department.
“In the proposal that goes to the minister of health for funding, will it have an emergency department in it?” he asked Patey.
Despite repeated requests for a “yes or no” answer, Patey refused to be pinned down, referring to questions asked of Health Minister Eric Hoskins by Lambton Kent Middlesex MPP Monte McNaughton.
“Who am I to offer guarantees ….when the minister himself yesterday front of the entire house wouldn’t offer that guarantee or make it any clearer. I’m just Colin Patey,” he said.
He said, for the past five years, despite concerns to the contrary, “at no place at no time at anywhere was there any discussion about closure of the emergency department in Wallaceburg.”
He said, however, those comments reflected the time when the Alliance had a balanced budget.
Patey said a $1.8 million deficit facing the Alliance is a direct result of a $2.5 million shortfall in provincial funding.
He said there is a “30 per cent variance in their (the province’s) funding approach to the way in which we deliver emergency health care services. It is not funding us to operate two emergency departments this year.”
He said the funding shortfall means “all things have to be on the table.”
There were 61,074 visits to the Alliance’s emergency department in fiscal 2014/15 but figures don’t break out the number by campus.
Despite not offering assurances on the future of the SDH emergency room, Patey said he would continue to advocate for proper health care.
“One of the things I’ll be advocating for, in every corner that I find myself in, is that you do not make an agreement, you do not make a decision to close the emergency department in Wallaceburg until there is something else in place that is going to look after safety, access, and if we can, improving the quality of care. The board knows that; they trust me to be advocating for that. I’ll make that statement to the LHIN.”
Patey said the Alliance is working with other health-care partners such as the Canadian Mental Health Association and the Chatham-Kent Community Health Centres to broaden the usage of a new centre and access other funding if possible.
Noel said it’s important for community members to come together and let Queen’s Park know there is a strong backing for emergency services.
That sentiment was echoed by board member Kris Lee, who said she’d like to see hundreds of people turn out for the April 19 meeting.
“I want to get 1,000 members in this community. I think the government checks to see which way the wind is blowing. And if the wind is blowing where there is a lot of people that are commanding something for their community… we’re not going to get a mega-hospital… but we are going to get something that we want. I want to know what you want to hear, I don’t want someone in Toronto saying you need this facility and you need that. This community should be telling the board how that facility should look, including the ER. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.”
Noel said the number of hospital members has dropped to 164 from 300. He urged people to pay the $10 fee for a three-year membership. “Numbers matter.”
He said although it’s clear the Sydenham campus is on its last legs, Wallaceburg residents shouldn’t lose needed medical care as a result.
Patey said he would like to see a more transparent approach from the ministry of health regarding funding, noting that the Imagine Project submitted four ago remains in limbo.
Under that project, the preferred option for Chatham was a single-phase 6-storey, northeast extension and a 1-storey podium extension to the north of the St. Joseph’s wing of the Chatham Campus.
In Wallaceburg, the preferred option was a single-storey freestanding facility, with a full service Emergency Department, as a cornerstone for what was described as a “campus of care”.
This option also provides a cluster of complementary healthcare services to draw people primarily for ambulatory and wellbeing appointment-based services (primary care).
“If we could get word that the project is a non-starter which it appears to be, at least we could devote our resources to a meeting the community needs in another way,” he said.
Teachers are more important to the Criminal Wynne than Health Care . and the List of a growing sunshine club members shows that in Ontario ,they are all pigs at the trough at the expence of the Tax Payers , and we need a Tax Revolt in Ontario and We need to FIRE WYNNE !!!
I thought the LHINs were supposed to give us local control, and take the decision making away from Toronto?
No, the LHIN's were created to deflect the outrage of the citizenry away from Premier McGuinty after he broke his "no new taxes" election promise with his Ontario Health Tax. They just moved the excess bureaucracy out of Toronto and spread it across the province. One of the biggest wastes in today's health care system are the LHIN's and they could save $100 million if they were eliminated. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/sohail-gandhi/ontario-lhin_b_9258894.html