By Pat Scholfield
Finally a decision has been made to review the Niagara Health System’s so-called Hospital Improvement Plan! How do we – those of us who are advocates in various coalitions – feel about it? Good! Do we feel ecstatic? No.
Pat Scholfield
And why don’t we feel ecstatic? Because it is highly unlikely the review will be either independent, objective or complete.
Remember we asked for an independent review. Health Minister Deb Matthews has assured us it will be an independent evaluation headed by the Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant Local Health Integration Network (LHIN), the Niagara Health System (NHS) and members of Regional Council, who will set up the terms of reference. That means two of the agencies that developed and approved the Hospital Improvement Plan (HIP) will be the bodies chosen to set up the criteria for the evaluation. Isn’t this a flagrant conflict of interest?
All we can hope for is that Niagara’s Regional Chair Gary Burroughs will be able to select regional councillors who will provide some objectivity to the process. We need municipal leaders like Port Colborne Mayor Vance Badawey and Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati to provide some knowledgeable and informed input for south and north Niagara.
Minister Matthews claims the NHS developed a comprehensive HIP in consultation with Dr. Kitts, who agreed the HIP was taking the hospital in the right direction. I have read Dr. Kitts report and this is not exactly accurate. Dr. Kitts was highly critical of the location of the new hospital to be built in west St. Catharines and also critical of the lack of public trust the people had in the leadership of the NHS. He warned these two factors could make it impossible to implement the HIP successfully. Why was the Ministry of Health so reluctant to listen to their own expert’s report?
Since mistakes were and still are being made in the location of the new hospital, what can be done to make acceptable corrections? Dr. Kitts recommended, “The NHS, municipalities and citizens of Niagara identify challenges with the site of the new healthcare complex in St. Catharines and look for opportunities to overcome them”. Solutions may lie in providing alternate locations for timely intervention in the southern tier. This will be an adjustment not suggested in the HIP.
Health Minister Matthews states the review would only encompass the HIP to date. This would be a major mistake. A thorough, truly comprehensive review of the HIP in its entirety is required to analyze if all the residents across Niagara will have timely and safe access to necessary hospital services. This “due diligence” will not be completed if the review only includes the HIP implementation to date, which Minister Matthews is advocating.
What changes has the NHS implemented to date? Closure of emergency departments in Port Colborne and Fort Erie and the conversion to urgent care centres for minor ailments.
There is no longer acute care at both hospitals as they have transcended to nursing homes. Over 100 hospital beds and accompanying front line workers have been cut across Niagara.
Ophthalmology is moved to Welland, and plastic surgery and stroke care is located at Niagara Falls.
What will the future bring as the HIP unfolds over the next few years? Major changes.
According to LHIN reports, another 41 beds will be cut. The 75 long-term care beds and 41 interim beds in the Extended Care Unit at Welland hospital will be mothballed.
Core surgical services will be removed from hospitals in Niagara Falls and Welland including Obstetrics and Pediatrics. So many surgical specialties will be lost in Welland that the physicians there released their Task Force Report expressing concern they will no longer be able to retain a viable 24/7 ER at Welland hospital. This report was released in 2009 and the NHS has still not formally responded to it.
Will all these closures have a dramatic impact on Port Colborne, Wainfleet and the entire southern tier? We answer with a resounding YES.
These are questions that need to be answered by a thorough, comprehensive review of the entire HIP by a knowledgeable and objective body of citizens dedicated to providing genuine timely and equitable access to adequate health care that all Niagarans can support.
Therefore, we are asking for an honest and independent review of the entire HIP.
Pat Scholfield is a resident of south Niagara and a longtime citizen advocate for fair and accessible hospital services for all Niagara residents.
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Matthews know she will no longer be the Health Minister following the Provincial Election thus she is making like she truly cares about the peoples of the “Southern Tier” of the Niagara Region. WELL!! You can rest assured Madame Health Minister we know differently and your name will be INKED and linked in the infamy that is the history of the South Niagara Region.
This phoney so called “Independent Review” is about as Independent as having Foxes and Weasels guarding the entrances to the gullible chickens inside the chicken house. and I might add Minister you might not be the one making the snow balls BUT you certainly are the one who is throwing them with little or no concern for the damage you are rubber stamping.
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Someone mentioned putting a retired judge on the “Independent Review”. Wouldn’t that help to make it more “independent”? (Pat , Linda M., and other Yellow Brigade supporters should also be on it, since they are well informed.)
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I agree, there needs to be independent and stakeholder citizen participation on this particular committee. It is currently too outweighed by the very same people that brought us into this mess in the first place.
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Mrs. Scholfield’s husband is a patient of mine and when she comes into the office with him, we usually have conversations about the NHS, the LHIN and the Minister of Health. Her letter has hit the nail right on the head. The HIP was a document drafted in secrecy by the former NHS Chief of Staff Dr. William Schragge and department heads from each of the medical and surgical departments in the NHS who had to sign a confidentiality agreement. They were not allowed to discuss the HIP contents with any of the doctors in the departments that they represented. The location of the new St. Catharines Hospital (I call it the East Jordan Hospital) was intended to replace the two aging St. Catharines Hospitals although it is now the location of Oncology (cancer treatment) and Maternity and Child (formerly called Obstetrics and Gynaecology and Paediatrics). This now makes it a de facto regional hospital. All of the doctors in Niagara except those from St. Catharines fought to locate the new hospital more centrally in the region and were ignored by the NHS administration (including Mrs. Sevenpifer and Mrs. Souter). The NHS administration has routinely ignored the recommendations of the medical doctors in the system and as a result we have stopped caring and are suffering morale problems causing great difficulty in recruiting physician leaders unless they are paid. It is the doctors of Niagara who supply medical and surgical care to the citizens and without the doctors, the hospitals can be closed, all the nurses laid off and the administrators can pick up their BlackBerry’s, leave their meetings and go home.
The citizens and taxpayers of Niagara are not being well served by NHS administration who continue to be fired and sometimes replaced (we now have an interim CEO and an interim Chief of Staff and to date there has been significant difficulty in finding replacements for them). The HIP (Hospital Improvement Plan) is a flawed document and I commend Mrs. Pat Scholfield for trying to make a wrong into a right and to restore proper medical care to Niagara.
Dr. Leonard Makerewich
Ear, Nose and Throat Surgeon and Sleep Medicine Specialist
Niagara Falls (formerly from Port Colborne)
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