Two months after they suspended governance of the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance, the two Chatham hospital boards want to terminate the agreement which ties them to the Sydenham District Hospital.
“It’s time,” said acting Public General Hospital board chair Jane Havens Friday. “It is exceedingly clear that there are issues that we are no longer able to resolve and no longer able to negotiate or mediate.”
Despite Havens assertion in a media release that the Wallaceburg group had been notified, SDH board chair Sheldon Parsons said Friday he hadn’t received anything.
“I’ve heard (of it) from the media but I did not receive a copy of it so I’m limited in what I can say or do.”
He admitted there had been discussion of a possible split but the process had been labeled confidential.
“We’ve been honouring that; we believe they’ve breached that confidence by releasing it publically.
We don’t know what to expect. We’ve always expressed our preference to discuss issues at the board table but we’ve been met with obstructionism. They don’t want to meet, discuss or resolve the issues.”
Havens says since the actual document relating to the split wasn’t released, no confidentiality was breached.
The request from PGH and St. Joseph’s boards would require approval of the Erie St. Clair Local Health Integration Network, (LHIN), however, regardless of the LHIN decision, Havens said there will be no “kissing and making up.”
Shannon Sasseville, spokesman for the LHIN, said that group has no comment on the matter and refused to even acknowledge if the LHIN had received a request to dissolve the Alliance or if there was precedent to do so.
Havens said the SDH board has “gone rogue” and is harming the reputation of the Alliance.
She said the move is the only way to end the “circus” surrounding the split in which the CKHA, its CEO and members of its medical staff have come under criticism.
The Alliance plan to close Wallaceburg’s emergency department and replace it with a part-time walk-in clinic with no physician on site has been at the heart of the controversy.
“We have no time frame in mind but we’d like to have it happen as soon as possible,” she said. “These things take time and cost a lot of money. Lawyers are the ones that benefit here.”
The SJH and PGH boards notified SDH in April they were suspending governance over their differences.
Havens said it’s “pretty dangerous ground” for members of the board to criticize decisions made by CEO Colin Patey and the vision expressed by medical staff.
“We’re so lucky to have him in this community,” she said. “When you see your leadership skewered in the media, it’s not acceptable. He doesn’t deserve it, how hard he works.”
She said the boards would fulfill their governance responsibilities on a separate basis until the province resolves the issue.
“Business will get done,” she said.
Havens said the split between the Chatham and Wallaceburg boards has widened significantly in the past three years after an ill-fated attempt to work out a new governance model.
She said the SDH board “actually came to lag further behind us. We’re not even facing in the same direction. We ended up actually being further behind from a governance point of view than we were when we started.”
Havens said it will be up to the LHIN to determine how funding, service delivery, division of assets and other issues will be handled.
She said she expects that whatever future arrangement the LHIN develops, she expects there will not be significant differences in service delivery.
“We have relationships with all hospitals in the area,” she said.
Parsons said he would expect to see a “close working relationship” between Chatham and Wallaceburg.
“We would expect access to specialists and services in Chatham in the same manner Chatham works with larger centres in London and Windsor,” he said.
The SDH board is preparing a plan for a $10 million medical centre with integrated services from a number of community partners and a 24/7 emergency room.
The PGH and St. Joseph’s boards last month announced plans for a similar health care centre with no traditional emergency services.
The LHIN refused comment on those proposals as well.
