A Commentary by Doug Draper
Many of you may have heard the legendary tale about the dance band on the Titanic playing the mournful hymn ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’, after the giant liner struck the iceberg and was slowly going down. Actually, according to the accounts of Titanic survivors, the band spent most of its last gig playing more cheerful music, including upbeat ragtime hits of the day like ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’.
The Niagara Health System's annual general meeting of board was an exercise in self gratification. Photo by Doug Draper
I thought about the Titanic dance band, playing on while both it and the ship it was on was sinking into oblivion, as a I left the annual meeting this June 22 of the Niagara Health System’s board.
For all of the many challenges and controversies this board – responsible for managing most of what is left of the hospital sites in Niagara, Ontario – it was a meeting It was a meeting that lasted all of 30 minutes, at the most, with a good part of it taken up by the NHS’s CEO, Debbie Sevenpifer, and the board’s chair, Betty Lou Souter, making self-congratulatory remarks about the achievements of the past year and even better things they feel lay ahead. All while most of the rest of the board members – appointed by Sevenpifer and her minions – sat there like a lump.
“Together, we are all up for the challenge and I am excited to work with others to raise the bar (for health care) in Niagara,” said Sevenpifer, as she discussed efforts to reduce waiting times for patients in what is left of Niagara’s emergency rooms and for patients awaiting surgery.
A “central priority,” she added, is improving emergency care. Sevenpifer praised a recent story in The St. Catharines Standard (the NHS’s unofficial public relations sheet) for focusing on the work people in the system are doing to help patients rather than focusing “brick and mortar” mortar issues.
The new hospital complex in west St. Catharines is 'driving from the ground', boasts says NHS CEO Debbie Sevenpifer. Photo by Doug Draper.
There is no doubt there are good people (doctors and nurses and other support workers) doing the very best they can to provide the best care possible to patients, and I have heard from a number of them off the record about their frustrations under the thumb of this NHS board. These people deserve the support of the public and should not be rolled in with any and all loss of faith members of the public feel for the NHS administration and its board.
Just the same, Sevenpifer could apparently not help but mention one ‘brick-and-mortar’ matter in her remarks – one she has nurtured and is so obviously excited about. And that one is the major hospital complex the NHS is building in west St. Catharines. “Excitement is growing as the building drives from the ground,” she said of the new hospital complex, adding that a region-wide fundraising campaign for it is “doing very well.”
Of course, there was no mention of the concern many Niagara residents continue to express about the NHS’s conversion of emergency rooms at hospital sites in Port Colborne and Fort Erie to urgent care centres that can no longer handle those five-per-cent or so of patients in the southern tier of the region suffering heart attacks, life-threatening injuries and other maladies that require emergency care.
There was no mention of the call from literally thousands of southern tier residents to have these emergency rooms reinstalled, or of the coroner’s inquest pending over the circumstances surrounding the death of 18-year-old Fort Erie resident Reilly Anzovino, who died at the Welland hospital site during the Christmas scene last year, following a car crash in her hometown.
There was also no mention of the recent decision by Welland’s city council to join the councils of Fort Erie and Port Colborne in calling for a provincial review of NHS’s operations, even as the NHS moved to close another 22 beds at the Welland hospital site.
All of the public rallies for better hospital services held here in Niagara and at Queen’s Park, and the questions raised by provincial members of the legislature about concerns over hospital services in Niagara, might just as well have been taking place on another planet as this board raced through its annual meeting, with most of its members sitting there like a lump.
I left there with a strong feeling that there was not one member of this handpicked board that has the courage to speak out at a meeting like this for the public at large. All the more reason to lobby the province for elected hospital boards. As a native of Welland who was a little kid when the current Welland hospital was built with donations from many hardworking members of the community.
I also left thinking how sad it is that this ‘alien board’ – and I really do believe it is an alien board – holds the fate of this hospital in its hands, right down to charging people who go to visit their friends and relatives a parking fee to go and visit members of their family and friends in hospital care. Although there is a generous amount of space for parking around this hospital, the board sets a fee of $2.50 for the first hour up to a maximum of $5 – apparently as another way of siphoning up dollars to help pay those gold-plated salaries and benefits at the top of the NHS foodchain.
(Click on Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to our greater binational Niagara region.)
Niagara At Large 
It just sturs me to no end to hear the name of Debbie Stevenpifer with what I saw of her at our Leasure Plex (in Fort Erie), strutting up and down the stage with all of the gold plated salary she gets at our expense is just not right.
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I think the last paragraph says it all. Health care dollars are not being spent on health care. They are going to administrative salaries. Hospital beds are closing in established wards so that a new hospital can be built. Will the NHS have any money left to put beds & staff in that building? An appointed board is handicapped in another way. Are they a management board, a policy board or are they just an advisory board. Is there opportunity to ask questions or research the issues that need to be addressed ? Do they just rely on staff for their information? That just makes it easier for staff to pursue their own agenda. I wonder what $evenpifer would do if the board refused to cooperate with her agenda? Maybe the board members should be asking themselves that question.
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D7Pip and her NHS suffer from the Blinder Syndrome, an optimistic form of schizophrenic unreality in which one sees only the bad others do them and the good they think they do others and vice versa. This form of self praise, along with a distorted view of the business bottom line, is the only human quality in the NHS. It doesn’t bode well for hurt and sick patients who want realistic assessments from health care leaders.
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In my previous post I should have written, ‘and NO vice versa.’ While not unique, Blinder Syndrome is a newly described administrative malady that should go down in the annals of bad business practices.
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I wonder how the NHS will react when somebody from south Niagara cannot get to the hospital because they don’t drive and have no family or friends that do and do not happen to have $100 in cash sitting around to pay for a cab … should these people be denied access to health care?
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The NHS administrators have absolutely NO medical credentials – NONE – and refuse to listen to and actually suppress input by anyone who has. They also have absolutely NO empathy for the public.
As Doug mentioned, the local papers are simply propaganda mouthpieces for the NHS and refuse to print letters contrary to their agenda. Many have tried without success and I know of one reporter who was fired for trying to put in a negative article about the NHS. There goes freedom of the press. Next to go will be universal health care. As for Angela, don’t worry about transportation to the hospital because soon health care will be private and you won’t be able to afford it even if you could get there!
All big Deb and her lackeys are interested in is making big bucks and making a name for themselves by building the new mega hospital – with our dollars! They should be arrested and tried for crimes against humanity (genocide) as the unneccesary deaths start to multiply. Shame on all of the bastards!
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2 years this spring my grandson and his fiancee went to the St.Catharines General trying to get help at the emengency room, she being 3 months pregnant was spotting blood after waiting 12 hours for a doctor and not seeing one, they proceeded to Hotel Dieu where they waited another 11 hours for help, she gave birth in the ladies wasroom to a still born baby, I think Debbie and Co are murderers and caused the death of my Great grandchild this has destroyed any warm feeling that I ever had about our health system,I wrote to many of the local papers they declined to put it in the papers, I sent a copy to my MMP Kim Craiter he was horrified at what happened.
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Were you aware that when a transfer from the Douglas Memorial Hospital site for emergency surgery to another site is required, that the patient has to pay 50% of the transportation costs? And the patient has to make their own arrangements to get home afterwards. Even minor surgery cannot be performed at Douglas.
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At the last Council Meeting Mayor Martin said the “H” is still on the building and its still a hospital. One Yellow Shirt Member said the “H” was for HOPE. Hope you can get to Help in time!
Hope you can get a Dr. to look at
you in time!
Hope you don’t have to cancel 3
or 4 times!
Hope the nurses aren’ t falling
off their feet from overwork!
Hope it doesn’t cost $$ you
don’t have!
Hope they have the equipment and necessary help to assist you!
Hope you don’t wait hours, or days and then moved to another hospital to wait again!
Hope you get treated with respect and dignity in your time of need….. not with anger because they are overworked and exhausted!
NEED I GO ON & ON TELLING YOU HOW THE SYSTEM IS SO BROKEN THAT WE ARE AT THEIR MERCY WHEN WE ARE LEAST ABLE TO COPE WITH THEM!!! anne
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Because of surgical procedures being removed from Douglas Hospital, I received the wrong lense in my eye, which is causing me a great deal of stress that I must deal with the rest of my life.
Because of the cut back in other local hospitals, my husband, an in patient, was given Tylnol when he was having a heart attack. He was then placed in ICU. He crawled out of bed, over the bars while hooked up to several machines, and they “found” him on the floor. Since he was in a very weakened state, this would have taken some time. Where was everybody??
Leave our hospitals alone.
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