A Commentary by Doug Draper
Once again we in Niagara, Ontario are being treated to another episode in the ‘Alice in Wonderland’ world of a Niagara Health System that has made a mess of our regional hospital services for most of the last 10 year.
NHS supervisor Kevin Smith
In the letter, Smith stresses that assertions by others in the Niagara community that he, as a supervisor brought in by the McGuinty government to review hospital services here, is “unwilling to review data and recommend program alignment in the “HIP” (Niagara Health system’s Hospital Improvement Plan) are not correct. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” he says.
My plan is to present a series of options for consideration and feedback prior to making a final recommendation. These options will be developed consistent with the best available data at this time, best practices for safe and quality care within available resources and will also utilize information gathered from prior reviews related to the programs and services provided by the NHS.”
“My comments with respect to the HIP reflect my belief that while learning from the past we cannot be held back by it. As I said when appointed, with few exceptions – such as the site of the soon to be completed new health complex in St. Catharines, or the sale of the Ontario Street site – all options are on the table,” continues Smith in his letter to the editor. “I regret if this has become less than clear.”
Well I have no regrets in charging, Mr. Smith, that your “plan” has not been very clear. You have been quoted, for the record, on at least three or four occasions, including a forum the St. Catharine’s radio station CKTB broadcast earlier this fall, saying you want to keep whatever happened in the past, and that includes the NHS. In a front page article, published this past October 6 in Niagara This Week and headlined, ‘NHS supervisor wants to stop talking about the HIP,” you were quoted saying; “I’d like to stop talking about the HIP. I think it’s brought nothing but ire.”
The HIP has brought ire all right, but so have your comments to the effect that it is not in the circle of matters you wish to discuss. We get a fairly good inkling, from a news series on our hospitals you and your minions orchestrated with Sun Media last month, that among other things, you’d rather shift the focus to a crisis of confidence between the public and frontline staff in our hospitals, rather than between the public and NHS’s senior administration.
You were quoted in that series discussing how “infuriated” you were over one account, reported earlier in the series, that a visitor to one of our hospital sites turned rude and chewed out a member of the cleaning staff. No doubt there will always be rude visitors and there may be a few on staff who deserve to hear an earful from them, but I would argue that in the broader scheme of things, this is a distraction that takes the focus away from a systemic, very serious record of mismanagement and lack of public accountability on the part of NHS’s board and senior administration.
It is disturbing that in a letter you wrote this October to Niagara regional councillor Andy Petrowski, acknowledging that two senior NHS administrators (one of home is still there) received trips to the January 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, courtesy of corporations doing business with the NHS, you did not express the same level of infuriation.
Instead, you went on to say in your letter to Petrowski that stricter conflict of interest guidelines have been phased in for hospital administrators since then and it hopefully won’t happen again. It smacks of more of your wanting to sweep under the rug any building blocks of the mess we are in. ‘That was then and this is now.’
Well Mr. Smith, this is NOW and the HIP is not something akin to the Dead Sea Scrolls. It very much remains a living, working blueprint for restructuring hospital services in this region, right up to and at least including plans to locate the bulk of Niagara’s acute care services at the new west St. Catharines hospital complex within the next couple of years.
The HIP and the its directives to date, including those to convert the Emergency Rooms in Port Colborne and Fort Erie to urgent care centres, are already aggravating off-load delays for patients and the paramedics and police attending to them at the tree remaining ERs Niagara has left in St. Catharines, Niagara Falls and Welland.
This past November 3, at the Ontario coroner’s inquest into the circumstances surround the death of Fort Erie teen, Reilly Anzovino, who didn’t quite make it to the Welland ER on time for the help she needed from a car crash in her hometown 22 months ago, one of Niagara region’s paramedics said that as many as four or five ambulances carrying patients can be backed up at the Niagara Falls and Welland ERs for as long as four or five hours now.
All of the bad decisions the NHS has made, including those imbedded in the HIP, are continuing to impact negatively on our hospital services NOW Mr. Smith, and probably will for some time to come.
I regret it if I haven’t made my comments on this subject clear.
(Niagara At Large invites you to share your views on this post in the comment boxes below. Please remember that we only post comments by readers willing to join the rest of us in sharing their first and last names for posting.)
Niagara At Large 
Well said, Sir.
You’ve made yourself very clear, Doug, and, once again you are ‘spot on’. What is it these ‘ guys’ don’t get? —-that is the Management Structure, the Brass on the Niagara Boards of Health and the obscene salaries made by Managers there and the LINs that are the core of the problem.
The Front Line staff are working flat out. Visitors are often frightened, and so become rude. The Procedures set in place by the Brass are deeply flawed and become clumsy, and sometimes unworkable — think of being outside a hospital and having to call an ambulence to get you to the front door, as happened recently. Sheesh.
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Doug, you so brilliantly articulated exactly how we feel. Does Dr. Smith honestly think we are so stupid as to believe the b.s. in the Sun Media series trying to convince us the staff and public are responsible for the NHS mess…..and not the HIP. It’s time for the NHS and Dr. Smith to fess up and admit we need to change elements of the HIP. Quality care is not much good to a patient if he or she dies before they make it to the facility that houses this quality care.
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I feel the same as you do …… here we go round the Mulberry Bush again…..it seems as tho’ it’s the “SAME OLD , SAME OLD” !From day one we’ve been apologized to for the mistakes made & told they will correct the errors made,yet people are dying & they still keep singing the same old song hoping that we will believe their nonsense…… now this new assessment of the system is supposed to appease & calm the people ,like trying to lull them into a place that by some miracle the empty promises & delays will satisfy them….. NO WAY …. Niagara South is being shafted royally & our tax dollars are going to St. Cath’s to support the Mega System we are supposed to feel grateful about ….. do what you want in St. Cath’s BUT give Fort Erie & Port Colborne “LIFE LINE” so that we also may at least have a life line & opportunities as the rest of the peninsula has!! Talk is cheap …. we need honest action & answers to our Life & Death NEEDS!!!
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It took a very long time for the Minister of Health to acknowledge that there was a problem in the Kingdom of the Niagara Health System. She finally had heard enough about the chaos in Niagara created by the Hospital Improvement Plan and announced that indeed a review of the HIP was to take place.
A Tripartite Committee hammering out the Terms of Reference to review the HIP was interupted by the arrival of Supervisor Smith. In effect , Smith says to Da Boys….Leave this little problem to me boys and I will take care of it.NHS has been reviewed to death and I can add the HIP to my list of problems in your Health Kingdom and do the job for you.
THE HIP THE END
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Niagara deserves better
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Doug it is frightening to see the ranks that are in place to guarantee the status quo. Everyone is trying to cover their own arse and keep their jobs. I guess that is a natural impulse. But this is life and death we are talking about. At the inquest this week the coroner asked the very young advanced care paramedic if he believed the re-opening of the port colborne and fort Erie er’s would gave save reilly’s life. After a long pause in front if his union bosses, plus NHS, ministry of health, and union lawyers he said “no”. What else could he say. He is a young man with a career to protect. Keep asking questions Doug.
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Did anyone really expect change? They just throw new faces at us every few months in hope of wearing out protests by attrition. What was the voter turn out in the last election, about 40%. Then everybody bitches about why nothing ever changes. The powers that be have no fear of the voters or of being overwhelmed by the democratic process. The voters are lackadaisical, largely uninformed and gutless. Democracy no longer exists because we have allowed it to lapse. People could care less about the health care system until they need it and they take it for granted that it will be there….WRONG. Until more people get adamant about things, we will get what we deserve. How frustrating!
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Dear Mr. Smith,
Good luck with your attempt at smoothing things over between the NHS and the People of Niagara.
It’s very apparent that the People of Niagara have taken measure of the situation and have successfully separated the wheat from the chafe.
Up until October 27, 2011, when the outbreak of C. Difficile was declared over, I have compiled 357 Pages/123,647 Words just from the St. Catharines Standard Newspaper… ALONE!
Do the right thing Mr. Smith or you will become part and parcel of the most monumental disgrace in Niagara’s History.
Please, Mr. Smith, do not fall on your sword for the likes of Premier McGuinty.
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Great summary, Mr. Draper, of the spin cycle we are getting from the provincial government courtesy of their health file quarterback, Mister Kevin Smith. Someone needs to ask how much Smith is being paid daily by Ontario taxpayers, because we aren’t getting our money’s worth out of this public relations fiasco. Lest we forget, this point guy has been hired by another spinner, Mr. McGuinty, who promised no new taxes and cost us a $billion or more with the eHealth scandal.
The NHS is broken, dead, flat-lining. It’s time for an “Occupy NHS” movement to confront this self-serving band of bureaucrats head-on and a total cleansing of top management while we’re at it.
When it’s ok for our hospital system’s Chief Operating Officer to go to the Vancouver Olympics and take in a hockey game financed by a corporate supplier which everyone knows is ultimately on our backs, it’s fair to say the NHS’ days are numbered. Stay tuned because the investigation has just begun!
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As long as this Provincial government or the Conservatives for that matter are in office things will not change for they are both Corporate aligned with dues to pay. The “Freedom of the Press” is a joke more so in this country than in the USA basically because Quebecor’s Paladeau and his Fox Media agenda is getting the support of the Federal Government in Ottawa and it is just a matter of time before the CBC will be a medium of the Past……Then we will really see Privatization in action…..
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The Welland Tribune may as well be FOX Media now. It’s called propaganda.
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Bravo, Doug! Hear, hear!!
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Remember, the St. Catharines power brokers and their Regional Council enablers are as much to blame as the NHS management and board for this fiasco. With core services moving to west St. Kitts things will get worse before they get better.
It is simply too easy to point the finger at one culprit (albeit the major one) while not heaping scorn the rest.
To illustrate my point about the disconnect between Regional Council and South Niagara, watch very carefully how they maneuver around the issue to fill the vacancy left by Cindy Forster. Prediction- there will be a major thrust to “follow tradition” and appoint third place finisher, NHS apologist, Damian Goulbourne. ( I hope I’m wrong)
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Mr. Levick, I hope you are wrong. Democracy spoke to this very subject. Regional Council is obligated to respect Welland Council’s decision notwithstanding it will be a cost to Niagara’s taxpayers.
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I reiterate, I hope I’m wrong, yet some decisions made by Regional Council have not reflected the best interests of all of Niagara. I am pleased that St. Catharines chose to place you on Council to be outspoken and frank about on many topics. We need more representatives such as yourself rather than the bobble-head dolls we too often see in government
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Hey Andy….just want to share the morning humour with you in case you missed yesterday’s news. We now have the Nurses finally speaking up to say they are overworked and burning out and working in a pressure cooker , At the same time news was released that NHS head honcho Sue Matthews was off to Toronto to receive an award for Excellence in Nursing Leadership.
That’s called a kick in the slats.
Its time the ONA put their black list of the NHS back in place until the mess created by the HIP closures get reversed.
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