Building a New Hospital System for South Niagara

 By Doug Draper

As the provincial government and its enablers, including the Niagara Health System (NHS) and Hamilton, Niagara, Haldimand, Brant Local Health Integration Network (LHIN), slowly but surely dismantle hospital services in Niagara’s centre and south end, one mayor and his council are determined to take their services back.

Citizen protesters watched this spring as the emergency room of the Port Colborne General Hospital was converted to an urgent care centre as part of a downsizing plan the Niagara Health System is imposing on smaller hospitals across the region. Photo by Doug Draper

“We want to take control of our own destiny,” says Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badawey of his city’s decision over the past year to establish what it calls a Niagara South Health Care Corporation that is separate from the NHS and is moving forward with its own “blue print” for rebuilding hospital services in Niagara’s southern tier.
And if Badawey’s boldest dream comes true, that blue print includes a successful pitch to the provincial government for a new hospital to service south Niagara. Someone has to take on the responsibility and leadership to see that health care is available and the people here have access to all of the health care they need,” said Badawey in a recent interview with Niagara At Large of the move his council is taking to develop a health care system of its own.

“We have taken it upon ourselves to rebuild that health care.”
In the meantime, residents in Port Colborne, Wainfleet, Fort Erie, Welland and Niagara Falls have signed petitions and joined rallies, sometimes numbering into the thousands, since the NHS – the body created by the province’s former Conservative government nine years ago – tabled a “hospital improvement plan” a year ago this summer that calls for concentrating emergency and operating services, maternity services and others in Niagara’s north end. Many of those services would go to a new hospital complex the NHS is now building, despite a good deal of protest from residents and doctors in the health system, in a western corner of St. Catharines.
Badawey said that he and his council might not be moving forward with plans for a new health system, separate from the NHS, if the new complex – expected to cost the province and Niagara residents more than $1 billion – was located at a site closer to the middle of the region where all residents would have more equal access to it.
But since the NHS has moved forward with a west St. Catharines complex with the blessing of the province and its hand-picked appointees on the LHIN, Badawey said his city has no choice but to move forward with its own plans for providing quality primary and acute care services in the community.
The city is already gaining some ground in the areas of primary care and attracting new doctors to the community, but it intends to push further in making a case to the province for a full-service hospital for Niagara’s south end, he said. It is building that case by “listening and learning” from front-line doctors, nurses and other health-care workers in the community, and from emergency ambulance personnel, firefighters, police and others.

Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badawey

At the end of the day, Port Colborne council is bent on building a new health-care system for itself, but is also prepared “to extend an open door to other communities.”
“We are rebuilding a hospital system that not only will benefit Port Colborne five, 10, 15 and 20 years down the road but will hopefully benefit all of south Niagara,” Badawey said. “At the end of the day, we will be taking our blueprint to the province and expecting them to react accordingly in providing equal access to health-care services for our community.”
How many other municipalities in the south and central parts of the region will join Badawey and his council in this venture remains to be seen, and we will be following this.
Your comments on what best we can do to improve hospital and health-care services for all of Niagara are most welcome.
You can also inquire about purchasing a membership of $10 for an individual and $25 for families to support the continued work of the South Niagara Health Corporation to build health services in South Niagara by calling 905-835-2900, ext. 308 or by emailing following Carrie McIntosh at carriemcintosh@portcolborne.ca or by visiting the city’s website at http://www.portcolborne.ca/page/south_niagara_health_care.