Undeterred by the refusal of St. Joseph’s and PGH hospital boards to meet, members of the Sydenham District Hospital board are proceeding with their own plans for health care in North Kent, Walpole Island First Nation and south Lambton communities.
“We’ve hired Shore Consulting of Toronto and we’re already well underway in meeting with partners in the system,” said SDH board chair Sheldon Parsons. “We’re aware that the current SDH building is beyond its useful life so we need to begin the process.”
The St. Joseph’s and Public General Hospital board portions of the CKHA suspended governance April 6 when SDH officials wouldn’t back a plan to close the Wallaceburg campus’ Emergency Department and replace it with a part-time clinic with no physician on site.
Parsons said the key factors in the SDH plan are community involvement, partnerships and inclusion.
“We’ve hired an independent review team whose job it is to find out what our partners want and need and how we can integrate this into a plan going forward,” he said.
“It’s very grass roots driven involving the people who will be served and vital input from the medical professionals who will be serving them.”
He said the SDH group has adopted a four-part philosophy.
“Our motto, is promotion, prevention, care and support,” he said. “It’s a global approach to a healthy community.”
Parsons said the consultant’s report would be made available at the SDH annual meeting June 23 in Wallaceburg.
“We need approval of our members,” he said. “They supported our vision, but we want to go back to them with some meat on the bones so to speak so they can have a clearer picture. If we get their approval we will send the plan up the line to the Alliance, if we get the opportunity, to the LHIN (Local Health Integration Network) and the minister of health.”
Parsons said the outline of the plan is to have as many health care functions as possible group around a 24/7 emergency department staffed by physicians.
“The concept is what the community wants and it’s based on the province’s model for small rural hospitals,” he said. “It’s part of a community health care plan.”
Initial cost estimates are that the project would be in the $10 million range.
Parsons said SDH has been keeping the LHIN appraised of its actions and is prepared to share its information. “They have known and will continue to know exactly what we’re doing.”
