It Is A ‘Very Impressive’ New Hospital – Located In Totally The Wrong Place

A Note from Doug Draper on a tour of Niagara, Ontario’s new hospital

Well there I was, standing over the guest book and a spot on the page where I was asked to sign in and share my comments on the place. I thought about it for a moment and what else could I say?

A line-up for tours of the new Niagara Health System hospital complex in west St. Catharines. Photo by Doug Draper

“Very impressive,” were the words I finally wrote down.

I could have added something about this – the first 21^st-century, state-of-the-art hospital in Niagara, Ontario – not to mention first-of-a-kind cancer and cardiac treatment centers – located in the wrong location to best serve everyone in this region, but there wasn’t much room next to my name to get into that. And besides, how many times had I made that point in news columns over the past eight years?

And how many times had it been made by others, including dozens of area doctors who urged the Niagara Health System way back when to locate this grand new hospital complex at a more central site in the region?  Save for a few others, including Pat Scholfield, a Welland area resident living in Port Colborne at the time, and Sue Salzer of Fort Erie, few back then paid very much in the way of attention until it was all but too late.

All too many, including the Ontario Health Coalition , a Toronto-based public group that should have known better, bought in to the  fairy tales spun by the former CEO of the Niagara Health System, Debbie Sevenpifer – that there was (or at least should have been) a commitment to keep the aging hospitals in Fort Erie, Port Colborne, Welland and Niagara Falls in the region as fully functioning hospitals.  They bought into it despite the fact that if they’d been paying closer attention at the time to what some of thier doctors and others were trying to tell them through the media, they would have known that there was no way the NHS was going to keep these old sites running as fully functioning hospitals.

If more people in this region had spent less time watching hockey and or ‘America’s Funniest Videos’ or whatever they were doing five to eight years ago, they would have known that all hospital services across North America – not just here in this region – were being consolidated in larger, more central sites.

If they had engaged themselves as citizens – if they had gone out of their way to do a little homework at the time – they might have been aware of the studies the NHS board was receiving as early as 2004 and leaked to some of us in the media then – that most acute care services, including emergency and maternity, would be moved to a larger hospital site like the one that is opening in west St. Catharines at the end of this March.

The NHS, along with the Ontario Health Coalition and others that were in a position to know , should have been there, five to eight years ago, to lay it straight with the people of Niagara. They should have told them then that the the NHS was moving in the same direction as other regions across North American and consolidating acute care hospital services at fewer and fewer sites that might just mean locating most of those services at one site.

If they had been so honest way back when, it may have been more likely that people across this region would have wanted – possibly even demanded – that this very impressive new hospital for Niagara to be located in a more cental place – where everyone – north, south, east and west in Niagara – would have more equal access to it.   

But it is too late to do anything about that now. So what more can you say about the state-of-the-art workings of the

People lining up in the snow to tour new Niagara, Ontario hospital. Photo by Doug Draper

new hospital complex in north Niagara than ‘Very impressive.’

 (Niagara At Large invites all of you who dare to share your first and last name with your comments to share your views below.)