As it has for the past several months, the Sydenham District Hospital board will continue to steer a separate course for improving health care in its catchment area.
The entire board (Kris Lee, Sheldon Parsons, Herb John, Conrad Noel and George Lung) was re-elected for another term at the hospital’s annual general meeting last week.
The nearly 300 people at the meeting also approved a motion to allow the Walpole Island First Nations band council to appoint a member to the board. The corporation membership level is 539.
Rex Isaac was named to that position.
Lee said the election is an important distinction between SDH and the boards of Public General and St. Joseph’s hospitals that elect their boards behind closed doors.
“This vote gives us the licence to lead,” she said. “We’re a beacon to small rural hospitals for the ministry if not to our neighbours to the south.”
PGH and St. Joseph’s have refused to meet with SDH for several months, a tone which continued when Alliance CEO Colin, Patey, CFO Sarah Padfield and auditors from KPMG failed to appear at the SDH meeting.
SDH board chair Sheldon Parsons said he was surprised since Patey, as an ex-officio member of the board is expected to attend meetings and board by-laws require auditors’ attendance.
“Up until mid afternoon we were expecting CKHA staff here,” Parsons said.
“We were expecting the presentation of the financial statements. We were expecting presentations of other reports. We were expecting the auditors KPMG to be here to explain their auditing process and late this afternoon we learned that was not going to be the case.”
Patey issued a statement the day following the meeting stating that he didn’t attend because he wasn’t on the agenda and due to concerns expressed by the SDH board due to the potential for disrespectful or hostile questioning by the membership.
“With no role at the meeting and in consideration of the SDH board’s stated concern about disrespectful or hostile questioning, in the best interest of all parties, counsel concluded that the Alliance executive and auditor would not attend,” it stated.
Padfield and KPMG were listed on the agenda provided to those at the meeting.
Earlier this month the Minister of Health and Long-Term Care, at the request of the Erie St. Clair LHIN, appointed Bonnie Adamson to investigate issues related to the governance and management of the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance in the interest of public confidence.
Parsons said the SDH board has and will continue to fully cooperate with the investigation but will make no public comments about the process.
Those attending the meeting heard an update from Shore Consulting of Toronto for development of a medical facility to replace Sydenham District Hospital that has been considered too costly to upgrade.
The SDH board is in the process of identifying community needs and partnerships.
“The board is very committed to repairing the damage and restoring the services that are reasonable and expected by the patients and the residents within the communities that we serve,” Parsons said.
He said the SDH board is simultaneously focusing on provincial funding and service guidelines as established for small rural hospitals.
“We believe we have a very important role to fill in meeting community needs and those of the ministry as well,” he said. “I’m very optimistic we can do both.”
