By Doug Draper
The Niagara Health System is embarking on a communications campaign aimed at restoring trust in the communities it serves across the region.
Interim NHS CEO Sue Matthews
“Our communities in Niagara deserve better, and we will be taking bold steps in the coming weeks and months to address trust and reputation issues.” Said the NHS’s interim CEO Sue Matthews in a media release circulated this Thursday, July 28. “Our communities deserve to have hospitals they trust and are proud of,” she added. “Today there is a disconnect between what we are trying to achieve and how we are viewed.”
There is quite the disconnect, critics of this administration, responsible for managing a majority of the hospital services in Niagara, Ontario repeatedly say. Between the NHS’s decision to build the one and only new hospital complex for Niagara in the north end of the region, while systematically shutting down emergency and other acute care services in the south end, and a recent deadly outbreak of C. difficile in area hospitals, the gap between what the NHS claims it is ‘achieving’ and the lack of confidence among members of the community and even among many of its own front-line staff is wide.
Matthews said one key step the new effort to gain public trust is the hiring of Dr. Terrence Flynn, described as “an international expert on trust and reputation” at McMaster University, to conduct an “independent review” this September, reportedly for a cost of up to $30,000. The findings from the review, which will include a community-by-community survey of residents’ views about the hospital services the NHS is providing, will be used to put together an “action plan” for improving public relations.
One of many public rallies, this one in Fort Erie, protesting the way the NHS is managing hospital services in the region. File photo by Doug Draper
The first phase of this action plan, according to the NHS media release will include the following:
· “Continue to strive for the highest standards of patient safety, quality, and excellence.”
· “Assess our reputation and relationship with our community, share the results and action plan, and implement improvements.”
· “Commit to a culture of transparency and clear and timely communication.”
· “Renew our process for dealing with complaints and quality issues, and share our performance with the community.”
· “Embrace the spirit of open mindedness and consensus building, and support the Hospital Improvement Plan evaluation and outcomes.”
· “Renew vacancies in our leadership ranks with individuals who support eh new culture.”
· “CEO and chief of staff to lead improvement of relationship with medical staff.”
· “Exceed government requirements for infection control and become advocates for stricter reporting standards in Ontario.”
“We are committed to a new way of doing business, to maximizing our transparency, acknowledging our shortcomings and learning from our mistakes as a learning organization,” added Matthews in the media release. “We will be engaging our communities in new and meaningful ways to help us improve our relationships with them.”
As encouraging as all this sounds to some, including Niagara Falls Liberal MPP Kim Craitor, who has often criticized the NHS for not doing a poor job of communicating with area residents, some of the NHS’s longtime critics told Niagara At Large this July 29 that far more than a communications expert is needed to restore confidence in the area’s hospital services.
“If the NHS were doing an adequate job of providing all communities with even mediocre health services there would be no need for any staff in public relations,” said Sue Salzer, a Fort Erie resident and head of the citizen-based Yellow Shirt Brigade pushing for fairer access to quality hospital services across the region.
“There is no need for Mr. Flynn to advance a survey in September,” said Salzer. “The jury has already spoken and loudly. Over the past two years eight municipalities, the Region of Niagara, our politicos, 5,000 people in Fort Erie and over 15,000 petitions have spoken. The southern tier of Niagara has no confidence in the NHS. A PR specialist will not change that opinion. What will change their opinion will be a move by the NHS to provide equal and accessible health services and adjust the chaos that has been created by the Hospital ‘Improvement’ Plan.”
Pat Scholfield, another south Niagara resident long-time advocate for fairer access to hospital services in the region, emailed the following response to Niagara At Large.
“So the Niagara Health System is hiring a new PR man to communicate better and build up their image…Dr. Terrence Flynn. Apparently he was the man who was hired to correct the PR situation at Walkerton and also at Maple Leaf after their huge problems. Now he is the “hired gun” to resolve the negative image of the NHS.”
“I think I can save Dr. Flynn a lot of time and trouble,” Scholfield wrote. “Consider the following – the Ministry of Health and NHS made a political decision to build a new “super” hospital in west St. Catharines that was to serve the entire population of Niagara and would be located in the far northwest area of the region it is to serve. In order to pay for this Regional Hospital, it was necessary to draw up plans to dismantle all other outlying hospitals, piece by piece. To achieve this goal the NHS prepared and implemented the Hospital Improvement Plan (HIP), which closed departments, services and cut frontline staff, cleaning personnel and hospital beds to the point that the whole system was unsafe. ER wait times and paramedic off load delays soared. Patients waited days in the ER for a hospital bed. Providing isolation for patients suspected of carrying a “superbug” was next to impossible.”
“In my opinion,” added Scholfield, “all these drastic changes led to the serious C.difficile outbreak. If you check out “best practice” you will discover high bed occupancy rates can lead to a high rate of infectious disease outbreaks (and) the NHS is close to 100%. Also a contributor to the spread of “superbugs” is lack of cleaning and inability to isolate patients. …
“Rather than try to think of ways to communicate to the public that really the NHS is doing the best job they can, I have a solution for Dr. Flynn.”
“Admit to the public that mistakes have been made in the decision to locate the “super, regional hospital in west St. Catharines. Because it is too late to change the location of the new hospital there should be corrections made to the HIP. It should be adjusted to ensure the southern tier of Niagara will have adeuate access to safe emergency and acute care in their hospitals and thereby take the stress of the entire NHS system.”
(Niagara At Large encourages you to express your views on this topic in the comment boxes below and to encourage your friends and associates to join the growing number of people across the region visiting NAL for an independent take on the news unfolding in our lives.)
Niagara At Large 
The fundamental issue, which is the closing of E.R’s and hospitals, is not even on the table. The P.R angle is propoganda. It’s also a red herring.
Unfortunately, their P.R campaign may win the support of many people.
What type of doctor is this person?
Ironic that the problem at Walkerton was related to privatization.
LikeLike
Will someone please tell the NHS that we in Fort Erie are not interested in “communicating” with any of their past, present or future “communicators”. What we are intersted in and what we will continue to demand is the same level of health care as the over priviledged citizens in other parts of Niagara. RE-OPEN OUR FULL SERVICE HOSPITAL! Then we will be happy to “communicate” with you.
LikeLike
How incredibly stupid of Niagara Health System! They don’t have a public relations problem. They ARE a public relations disaster! A “hired gun” won’t solve things. A total replacement of the senior management, along with a focus on serving the communities IN THE COMMUNITIES is what it will take to resolve this disaster.
LikeLike
Maybe I missed it, not sure. As a result of Pat Schofield’s presentation, didn’t Welland Council promise to create a media product to inform Wellanders of proposed hospital changes? What is the current status of this endeavour?
LikeLike
Correction – A total replacement of senior management and the entire board with a method of holding them accountable – also decimate the LIEBRALS in the next election – There has to be a serious penalty for the suffering they have caused the people up to now
LikeLike
Commercial interests in P3 hospitals, banks in this case, must prioritize their shareholder interests, which are profits. This partially explains the intransigence of the NHS to be proactive in favour of public health care needs. Countries with exemplary health care keep commercialization away from health care decisions.
LikeLike
Councilor Rigby states that the “New” hospital is a St Catharines Hospital but the problem is it is being built at the EXPENSE of the peoples of the southern region of Niagara and that is the hypocritical agenda of people with a corporate culture (words taken from Sue Matthews own statements)
Centralization in purchasing materials can be productive in cost control but eliminating Hospitals to build a supposedly Super one far removed from the centre of the region is fool hardy as well as impractical…
Where have all these Dr.(s) come from.? I did realize Sue Matthews has a doctorate in Public Health, a three year program at the Charles Sturt University, one of which is located in Burlington and Terrance Rlynn who it seems is an assistant professor at the DeGroot school of Business in Hamilton, does he have a doctorate in communications also?
LikeLike
I’m puzzled that after years of explicitly expressing our concerns the NHS is asking for our input. What needs to be said from the public ,has been said over & over again…… they just don’t WANT to get it…. they made huge, costly errors in judgement that has cost lives and unnecessary $$$$ being spent in my opinion. The NHS seems to (as I’ve said before) play catch up! They let the obvious problems occur due to their stubborn refusal to take the bull by the horns & then TRY to remedy the problems in an inadequate way which is costing us more lives & more money.
LikeLike
I knew as soon as the NHS decided to close beds and hospitals 4 years ago that would cause overcrowding and dirty hospitals, I noticed when I visited Hotel Dieu in St Catharines, what a grungy and dismal place that place is, having spent ten days in ICU and 2 months at St, Joseph in Hamilton what an enormous contrast, St, Joes they are always cleaning, painting doing electrical work a regular beehive of professional people upgrading a remarkable place, what I see in Niagara is despair and disease the third world in microcosm, I talk to people all the time they are afraid of our hospital system,I have not seen this fear, on this side of the Atlantic before. we have a health crisis here and Dalton is fiddling away our lives.
LikeLike
Wow. “We don’t listen to your complaints about reduced service, waste and poor management – so we’ll go spend money to improve our image.”
Image comes from action, not P.R.
LikeLike
In Walkerton it was not Flynn who restored confidence with a PR job,,,It was clean water
With Maple Leaf it was not Flynn who restored public confidence,,,It was listeria free meat products
With the NHS it will not be a Flynn job that restores public confidence..It will be clean, disease free hospitals. It will be Emergency Rooms in the Southern Tier where ambulances can attend . It will be Doctors and staff who have the ability to speak freely, It will be an adequate number of medical and long term care beds and wait times that meet provincial averages,
LikeLike
I think the NHS has hired Professor Flynn to do damage control and are worried that the public won’t be donating do the several NHS hospital foundations.
Try getting a family meeting with the NHS. I’ve been trying to get a meeting since Feb. 2010. Maybe Dr. Flynn can help with that communication!
LikeLike
Credibility? The NHS Wants us to have faith? I wonder.
Usually one says “insult to injury”. In the case of the NHS, it is not difficult to know where to start.
• First, the NHS took the resources and trust funds of all the formerly independent hospitals by edict without permission of the local communities. Local boards were stacked to give this the veneer of legitimacy.
• Next, in an exercise of empire building to satisfy obvious gerrymandered political agendas, an inaccessible hospital was built right on a railway line, requiring a $500 million addition of redundant interchanges and roadways.
• Existing hospitals were operationally defunded, reducing front line staff to skeleton staff levels, reminiscent of wartime triage centers. Yet there is $68 million in annual provincial funds available to support a group of $300,000 a year redundant clerks.
• With maintenance & cleaning staff centralized, Hospitals were left filthy with fecal matter and other debris on the floor for days.
• Hospital beds were reduced to the point that the occupancy rate at the NHS is 97%, despite a 20% reduction in admissions, and resulting in “the patient shuffle”, where infected patients are moved in and out of multiple occupancy rooms as they become available.
• Not enough front line staff, resulting in a lack patient management that allows patients from infectious wards to wander the halls, and seriously ill people passing out in parking lots for lack of staff to help bring them in to emergency.
I am on solid ground here as all these wonderful scenes are graphically detailed in months of mainstream and alternate press articles, interviews, TV reports and so on. I guess in the case of the NHS, injury comes first, on the premise that it is easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission.
As the body count rises and well meaning apologists like Sue Matthews are trotted out before the press to say exactly what…oops? We made a boo-boo and 35 people are dead?
Maybe that works in a war zone, and maybe not. But here in 2011 Niagara, this was avoidable.
Sue Salzer in her note above makes an excellent point, but without captioning that special word – “accountability”. Both in Walkerton and at Maple Leaf public confidence was restored because someone was held accountable. At the NHS, all we get is hand wringing and “oops”, as management tries to pass the blame onto nurses and doctors. If the nurses and doctors are to be scapegoated, why should the public have faith in these same nurses and doctors? What magic wand will the NHS wave and make these people worthy of our trust after just smearing them? And who exactly will be left to trust?
The problem is rooted much deeper than some unwashed hands and finger-pointing with no resolution. As the province circles the wagons with the passage of Bill 173, pointy questions must be asked. Answers must be clear and forthright. Here’s my short list of questions. Forgive some repetition.
• Are the outbreaks of C. difficile related to the demonstrably poor level of house keeping at NHS hospitals? (St Catharines Standard)
• Is it true that the bathrooms at the Seaway mall are cleaner than those at NHS hospitals? (Welland Tribune)
• Was further spread of C.difficile abetted by sloppy policies that allowed clearly tagged patients from the infectious wards to wander about hospitals and have contact with others more susceptible? (Tribune interview)
• Is this poor house keeping the result of NHS’s decision to outsource cleaning staff and centralize dispatch? (SEIU)
• Was this decision part of the stripping of resources from existing hospitals and transferring these to the construction of the palatial new hospital? (NAL)
• Who was responsible for this decision? Was it NHS administrators? Specifically what are their names?
• Are these people liable for the premature deaths of C. difficile patients?
• Is the reason Bill 173 included Schedule 15 to hold these individuals harmless from litigation? Would Maple Leaf management been able to avoid accountability by a similar slight of hand?
• Was it possibly to protect NHS officials from criminal prosecution (Walkerton) or civil lawsuits (Maple Leaf)?
• Is it the thought of having to present evidence of willful neglect under oath that frightened our public officials into passing this “secrecy act”?
• Why did the McGuinty Government force this bill through?
• Was it to protect Smitherman, Caplan & Matthews from having to take responsibility?
• Is the upcoming provincial election part of the motivation to sweep political fall-out under the rug?
Accountability. Not money, not a pile of questionnaires, not some dopey teary-eyed pastel colored PR campaign. Accountability. That is the key to restoring faith.
LikeLike
One of Dr. Flynn’s first tasks is to conduct a study to see if the public really does lack trust in the NHS. This exercise is unnecessary becaus of the following:
Dr. Kitts (the LHIN’s own expert stated clearly in his report on pg. 4 the NHS lacks public support to such an extent it will be difficult to implement the HIP.
The Medical Staff Association (physicians of Niagara) voted a non-confidence vote in the NHS leadership in 2008.
Fort Erie hired a consulting firm in 2009 to conduct a survey on the NHS and found the majority of citizens of Niagara had a lack of trust in the NHS.
Both Fort Erie and Port Colborne were sent letters signed by the NHS CEO Debbie Sevenpifer that the NHS was fully committed to a full service hospital and 24/7 ER at the respective sites. This is a start.
The NHS insisted the new hospital was basically a hospital for St. Catharines, Thorold and area. Dr. Kitts in his report stated it was a Regional Hospital.
LikeLike
Public opinion survey regarding trust … what a waste of $30,000. Firstly, spend 30 minutes with those who fundraise for the hospital who can share the complaints and stories with you from the people they try to get to support the system. You should quickly come to the realization that the problem is a disengaged staff who provide poor customer service (yes you are a service industry) due to years of poor leadership and management. Secondly, talk to your staff and finally, put your $30,000 towards an effective leadership program to enhance employee relationship skills and you will subsequently find happier employees which will create the desired results.
LikeLike
Being “fully committed” to full service hospitals does not mean that we will get full service hospitals. Currently the N.H.S etc. is in P.R mode, which means that we can expect to be flooded with misinformation.
Pat, I’d have to scroll back, but I believe they made “promises” to you in the past which did not come to fruition.
LikeLike
God bless the Yellow Shirts for doing such an excellent job in keeping us all informed, on the machinations of the NHS and their dangerous vision of HIP, the body count is astounding and their cop out, that patients were already ill and dying does not impress the citizens of Niagara, we go to a hospital to be cured, not to wind up in a casket,we do not need PR we need action on this game of “russian roulette.”
LikeLike
Hoorah for Chris W…what a wonderful summation of the situation in Niagara. I have been asking through letters and phone calls to the “Patient Relations Specialist” at St.Catharines General for written proof that the emergency dept has a protocol in place for patients on coumadin for 15 months now. Even their PR people are useless. Christine Dominico
LikeLike