By Doug Draper
“The ball is now in her court,” says Port Colborne, Ontario Mayor Vance Badawey following an April 12 meeting he participated in with Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews over the state of hospital services in Niagara.
Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badawey
“The minister has an opportunity to be a part of our team. … to be part of the solution,” Badawey (who joined Niagara regional chairman Gary Burroughs, Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor and the mayors of Fort Erie, Welland and Niagara Falls) told Niagara At Large during an interview this April 14. “The time to do it is now.”
In letter Badawey sent to Matthews and shared with Niagara At Large, he went on to conclude that “together, we feel we can continue to make needed changes and focus on strengthening the quality of health care in the region, in turn, ensuring equitable access of health care services for all Niagara residents.”
“This is an opportunity,” the Port Colborne mayor wrote Matthews. “We hope you seize it.”
Badeway was part of a delegation meeting with the minister to press for an investigation of the impacts of a so-called ‘Hospital Improvement Plan’ launched more than two years ago by the board of the Niagara Health System (NHS) responsible for managing most of the hospital services in the region. The call for an investigation was approved earlier this year by Niagara’s regional council and earlier than that by the local councils for Niagara Falls, Welland, Port Colborne, Wainfleet, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Thorold and St. Catharines.
In a story posted on Niagara At Large this April 12, Burroughs said he felt the meeting with Matthews went well and he is “extremely hopeful” it will lead to a review of the NHS and its management activities.
Badawey put it this way during a separate phone interview. “It is, quite frankly, hard to gauge how it went. She didn’t give us any answers.”
The mayor added that Niagara residents should not have to go to the province’s health minister and ask for a review of something as important as a hospital improvement plan for a region. “They should be doing this anyway as a part of measuring performance.”
Niagara At Large is posting below the entire letter sent to Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews by Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badawey. In the comment boxes below the letter, we invite you to weigh in with your views on this issue. Please note that we only post comments from readers who are willing to link their real names to them.
Here is the full text of Mayor Vance Badawey’s April 13 letter to Ontario’s Health Minister
Minister Matthews:
May I first take this opportunity to express my sincere appreciation for allowing us your time yesterday. We truly appreciate it.
Throughout our meeting, you had mentioned that it would be beneficial for you to hear some specific challenges we are currently facing with respect to health care in Niagara. As I had mentioned, we feel many of the specific challenges would surface through a measurement of the Hospital Improvement Plan’s performance over the course of the past two years.
For example, data collected will be invaluable when development of further enhanced services become available. Port Colborne has been approached by DeGroote School of Medicine to increase the numbers of medical learners for clinical placements, and we continue to encourage academic appointments for all newly recruited physicians. This performance data will help us to know the demographics of the patients who present to the Urgent Care Centre. We will be able to provide a better interdisciplinary model of care and medical education. The HIP has changed the Emergency model of care, and we need to ensure that our learners are engaged as well.
The development of better policies and procedures with the present HIP implementation are necessary to standardize all scopes of practice. For example, with the current presentation of patients to the Urgent Care Centre may in fact point to a better and more economical provision of care using an inter-professional model that includes Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants. The data from the Review will ensure that these scopes of practice by their own regulatory bodies are developed to include CTAS 3-5 at our UCC. There is currently a limited scope for Physician Assistants, and the review will illustrate that this cannot wait until Year 5. Policies and Procedures are critical for validation of best practice modalities.
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We have made many queries as to the NHS STEMI protocol, and have really never received an adequate and evidence based answer, which in its self answers the question – there exists no STEMI protocol at Port Colborne. As a matter of fact, staff are told at Port Colborne General Hospital to call 911 if anyone experiences cardiac challenges – simply unacceptable!
Minister, we need to know how many STEMI patients are going to Welland, at what point are they receiving ACT, and what has been the outcome for these patients. This review will again give us evidence-based data to assist us to ensure that proper policies and procedures that include STEMI protocol are in place in light of the changes to the delivery of cardiac care.
Do we in fact have the proper personnel on our fleet of emergency response vehicles? Are we exhibiting best practice models of cardiac care? An independent consultant needs to answer this, so we can build off of the numbers gathered, to make it better. Do we have enough telemetry beds in Welland? What are the stats on the patients coming in with non-specific CP? Do they go on to infarct??
We know our numbers of patients that go to the UCC in Port Colborne are high, hence the need for the renovations to happen as quickly as possible. We do not have a walk-in clinic in Port Colborne, and do not believe that the walk-in model is the “best practice” for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion strategies – far from it. For this reason, our numbers will stay consistently high, and the HIP review will validate for the NHS the positives that are evident with this model of care. In most cases, the right care is being delivered in the right place. And our citizens are being educated on this very fact.
However, data is necessary to back this up. And in order to move forward with more team based primary health care delivery, we need the numbers and the consultants input as to the impact on the other sites since conversion. We know our site is doing well, but is Welland suffering with delays from our citizens traveling there for care? Is discharge care planning possible with multi-site emergency care? These are components of a service plan that need to be addressed in order to develop our own Health Care Service Plan that is equitable for all of Niagara.
Minister, we feel encouraged that you will consider standing shoulder to shoulder with Niagara. We are, in fact committed to working together to improve health care at NHS. Together, we feel we can continue to make needed changes and focus on strengthening the quality of health care in the region, in turn, ensuring equitable access of health care services for all Niagara residents.
This is an opportunity! We hope you seize it.
With kind regards, I remain,
Yours truly, Vance Badawey.
(Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to residents in our greater Niagara region and beyond.)
Niagara At Large 
Way to go Vance! You have presented a well-informed, well-written letter to the Minister. Let’s hope we get positive results put in place for Port Colborne.
Jack.
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A timely answer from the Minister is to be hoped for. Your follow-up initiative is admirable and behalf of all a thankyou for your continuing initiative and determination to provide adequate and accessible Emergency services for the Southern Tier.
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Congratulations Mayor Badawey on your well thought out response.
I confess the medical terminology is beyond me, but in simple terms, my understanding of what we need is an honest, trustworthy method od collecting data across our hospital system to accurately guage how the system is working for all Niagarans. Also, that we basically need to be assured people in the southern tier require and receive safe and timely access to emergency care, which from everything I have read, requires the local physicians to be equipped and able to stabilize and transfer patients.
Beyond that, I hope someone drew to the attention of the Health Minister the fact that the next steps if the hospital improvement plan will likely lead to the removal of core services from Niagara Falls and Welland hospitals.
According to the Physician’s Task Force Report Welland hospital will lose obstetrics, pediatrics, inpatient gynecological, inpatient urology, ear, nose and throat surgery, plastic and eventually orthopedics. It is the fear in the Task Force report that these loses will leave Welland hospital without a vital 24/7 emergency department. If and when this occurs distance for emergency services will increase dramatically.
Hopefully Minister Matthews will review the HIP carefully and make necessary adjustments to ensure adequate access to emergency services is afforded all Niagarans.
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Thank you for writing the story about the Mayors’ trip to Queens Park to speak to the Minister of Health Deb Matthews about the concerns of the people of Niagara with regards to our health system. Thank you also for attaching the great letter that Mayor Badawey wrote as a follow up.
We have also tried to speak to the Minister of Health many times and she would never acknowledge us, but in fact ignores the situation in Niagara and will likely ignore the Mayors and their attempt to move forward, and have the investigation of the NHS as voted on by Regional Council
As I understood, they went there to speak as one voice, and hopefully will continue to work together as a strong unit so that we will get our opportunity for equal health care, and regain our services and beds.
The letter that Mayor Badawey sent to the MOH shows that he, for one, is not going to let it just die and will continue to fight for his community.
The test results will show whether their pleas and arguments on behalf of Niagara were, in fact, heard and acted upon, or whether it will just be another delaying tactic.
Cutting wait times for hips and knees is all the Minister keeps coming up with, and she personally told me that same thing, the day the Ombudsman’s Report came out regarding the LHINS. I told her then, and will say again. Hips and knees are painful and debilitating to those requiring them, however they are not life threatening like cancer, like so many life threatening medical problems for which people in Niagara are forced to wait months, before they can receive treatment and testing. Heart related medical patients wait in crowded ERs for days before a bed can be found. No. It is not right. They do not have their priorities straight. Human life should come before money.
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It does get tiresome to hear the Minister answer questions in Parliament with her standard reply “Knee replacement and hip replacements wait times in Niagara are down…..
Someone is blowing smoke
NHS Board meeting Oct 19th.2010
“challenges with knee replacement wait times continue” but what I find interesting is the suggested way to reduce these wait times
Mr Leon suggests”patients be given the option to go outside the Region for their surgery and then further by motion
g]”Remind the offending surgeons that deviations from NHS policy could result in a failure to be re-credited.”
Sending patients outside the region and warning the Doctors did not have the required results{other then pissing off more then a few of our good Docs} for in Jan 2011 we again have Mr Leon reporting to the Board
“wait times for knee replacements and cataract surgery continue to present challenges.”
Hope someone clues the Minister in to pony up on her talking points and start talking about how she will give Emergency Services back to the Southern Tier.
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The Minister will not even understand the Mayor’s letter – She obviously has demonstrated little capability of running the Ministry of Health – Lets be blunt – THIS MINISTER AND THIS GOVERNMENT HAS GOT TO GO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
BRING ON THE ELECTION !!!!!
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And let’s not elect any more Id–ts !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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After using the local hospital system a couple of times, i got to see first hand some of the problems with it. Aside from that, if it wasn’t for this website I wouldn’t know what the causes were or about the political struggle between the province and the region.
I regret saying this but I think part of the problem is that the Ontario government made some key decisions about health care in the Niagara Region a long time ago and the NHS has simply been following it. Its good to see that the region is taking the discussion directly to the province.
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And the “Merry go Round” continues to spin …..telling us “we have all that we need to deal with our health crisis” ….. thanks to the devoted people who WILL NOT let the gov’t tell us lies without calling these lies and atrocities to the forefront & letting them know that we realize they are biding their time in hopes that those who are diligently seeking JUSTICE & fair health delivery to ALL ….. (esp. the ones they stole it from in the first place & they continue to ignore) might disappear.
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