A Commentary by Doug Draper
It was predictable given the parochialism that has been crippling progress for most of the 42 years the residents of Niagara, Ontario have been living with a system of governance that includes a regional council and 12 local municipalities.
Niagara Health System supervisor Kevin Smith outlining his recommendations this spring for restructuring Niagara, Ontario’s hospital services, including a recommendation for a new hospital in the region’s southern tier. Photo by Doug Draper
Kevin Smith, the supervisor the provincial government brought in to the region last year to try to mop up the mess former Niagara Health System CEO Debbie Sevenpifer and her board made of our hospital services, held a media conference last May to outline his recommendations for restructuring Niagara’s health care services for the future.One thing Smith could not recommend was physically removing the nearly completed super hospital Sevenpifer and company stubbornly decided to locate at a west St. Catharines site in Niagara’s north end and placing it in a more central location in the region where it should have gone in the first place. That would have required some kind of other-worldly levitating powers Smith has more or less admitted he does not possess.
So Smith recommended to the province that another new hospital be approved for south Niagara, and he left it up to the mayors of Niagara Falls, Fort Erie, Port Colborne, Wainfleet, Pelham and Welland this summer to decide on a site which has turned out to be – surprise, surprise – a recipe for even more parochial bickering that will, of course, continue to get this region nowhere.
As much as Smith said he hoped the mayors would arrive at a consensus for one site, they could not. Instead, they threw two sites his way – one near the corner of Lyons Creek Road and the QEW highway in the southern half of Niagara Falls and the other somewhere around Hwy. 406 and East Main Street in Welland – and earlier this September, in a final restructuring report to the province, Smith picked the one in Niagara Falls.
Mayors April Jeffs of Wainfleet, Vance Badawey of Port Colborne and Barry Sharpe of Welland expressed upset with the choice, and of course Jim Diodati, the mayor of Niagara Falls accepted it. If that doesn’t sound like parochialism has something to do with their reactions to the choice, then neither did the delight then-St. Catharines mayor Tim Rigby expressed when he heard the news from the province seven years ago that it was approving the Niagara Health System’s plan to build that other major hospital complex in west St. Catharines.
The new superhospital the Niagara Health System is constructing at a west St. Catharines site in north Niagara, scheduled to open and house many of the region’s acute care services in 2013. File photo taken by Doug Draper
“The eagle has landed,” was Rigby’s jubilant response when the Ontario Liberal government’s then public infrastructure renewal minister David Caplan said yes to the plan by NHS’s Sevenpifer and company to build the one and possibly only new hospital for which this region may receive provincial funding for many years to come in his municipality. Later, Rigby told me he might understand why the hospital should be located at a more central site in Niagara, but he would not accept the new hospital going in south Thorold, Welland or anyplace else while the old St. Catharines General and Hotel Dieu were on the chopping block.
While one can hardly blame Rigby, whose job, of course, was to fight for services in his municipality, to be that parochial about where the hospital would go, it should have been the job of the Niagara Health System – an amalgamated hospital body for the whole region – to do the brave thing for Niagara residents and pick the best site for all the region’s resident. But no. What Sevenpifer and company did instead was pander to that parochialism in the region.
Right up to the moment Sevenpifer and company tabled their so-called ‘Hospital Improvement Plan’ four summers ago, they told local councillors and their mayors in Niagara Falls, Welland, Port Colborne and Fort Erie that the Niagara Health System was committed to fully functioning, community based hospitals. When that plan was released in August of 2008, it revealed what many doctors working for the NHS and others tried to warn the public for at least three years – which the NHS had every intention of consolidating or concentrating as many acute care services as possible in a single hospital. And of course, that would turn out to be the new one it decided to locate in west St. Catharines.
Sadly enough, many good people in the south end rallied to “save” their aging hospitals when it was becoming all too clear – as if it wasn’t a decade ago – that those old sites were becoming too costly to upgrade for modern-day hospital operations. I remember the former Port Colborne regional councillor receiving applause for pulling out his old “Save Our Hospital” t-shirt from the previous decade when the province’s Mike Harris government was considering closing Port’s hospital.
Interestingly enough, the only municipal council four or five years ago that voted in favour of locating the hospital now going in west St. Catharines in a more central location, even if it meant putting it in the south end of Thorold, or Pelham or Welland, was Niagara Falls, with the now mayor of that municipality, Jim Diodati, sitting on that council. No other council – not the one in Fort Erie, Welland, Port Colborne or Pelham – supported the Niagara Falls motion. What we had instead was then-Niagara Falls mayor Ted Salci (the only dissenting member on his council) and then-Welland mayor Damian Goulbourne, with the support of a majority on his council, joining Rigby in a trip to Queen’s Park to make a pitch for the new hospital going in west St. Catharines.
That left Smith having to make a choice between two locations south Niagara mayors gave him for a new hospital in the southern tier – a site at the south end of Niagara Falls or the site in the Welland area. So Smith made the only choice that seemed sensible given the fact that Niagara Falls is the second largest municipality in this region and one that hosts millions of visitors to the region each year.
There are those who argue that Niagara Falls isn’t part of the southern tier, although Diodati is quick to remind them that his municipality was part of the former Welland County going back to the mid-1800s.
Whether you buy Niagara Falls has a place in the southern tier or not, we are once again back to the parochial squabbling that slows progressive decision making in this region down, and Smith warned at a media briefing last week that an inability of municipal representatives to get their act together could possibly jeopardize any chance the region may have of attracting scarce funds from the province for another new hospital.
Then you get some people making the totally nuts argument that they could never accept an amalgamated Niagara at the municipal level because of how badly things have turned out with an amalgamated hospital system.
Hey folks, amalgamation is not the problem because when Sevenpifer and company were screwing up our hospital services, they never had the courage to make decisions about where hospital services should go in the best interest of all Niagara residents. They pandered to the same kind of parochialism that is still messing everything up now.
Please think about it!
(Niagara At Large invites you to share your views on this commentary, remembering that NAL only posts comments by individuals who also share their real first and last names.)
Niagara At Large 
I admit I’m one of those who has long had some concerns with the idea of amalgamation at the municipal level, my concerns had nothing to do with the experience we’ve had with the NHS. My biggest concern with one Niagara is how the “Mayor” or “Chair” would be elected. This concern is the same when it comes to the idea that the Regional Chair be elected at-large. The only people capable of running a regional campaign would be those with strong connections to people with deep pockets–in other words, they’d likely have to rely on a political party, such as the Conservatives who have members with those deep pockets. I can’t see any other way to run a truly regional at-large campaign stretching from West Lincoln and Grimsby in the western part to Fort Erie at the eastern shore. Although many of those already on regional council have strong connections to partisan politics, there are still a few with no affiliation. If we think we have problems with parochialism, imagine the problems we’ll have if partisan politics was added to the mix.
As for the NHS and Kevin Smith’s briefing, I like how he’s trying to say that if people are opposed to his preferred site in southern Niagara Falls, the province won’t approve this new hospital. Its good politics because he’s essentially provided the excuse needed when the predictable happens–which is that the province won’t fund it. As it is, the government had already approved a new hospital in West Lincoln, but postponed it this year due to budget constraints. Not to mention the Region can’t afford it either. If a new hospital were approved, the Region would be required to contribute. The Region is already committed to paying for the new hospital the former NHS board decided to stick near St. Catharines’ western boundary for the next 28 years and will be paying for a portion of the one in West Lincoln when it truly gets the green light. Can regional taxpayers really bare paying for another hospital over 30 years in addition to paying for the other two? Not unless they’re willing to see their regional taxes rise by at least 2% each year because the Region simply doesn’t have the resources to absorb all these funding requirements for 30 years when they’re still required to meet all of their regular services.
Proposing another new hospital in the south end was easy for Kevin Smith because he won’t have to pay for it directly. My natural skepticism makes me think he only proposed it to try and appease those in the southern end who are understandably upset their hospitals were either closed or will be losing core services. But even if Smith naively believes the province would build a third new hospital in Niagara, its unfortunate because not only are the mayors affected getting caught up in parochialism but there are probably some people who actually believe this hospital proposal will come true all for naught. But, then again, politicians and some people in this region are renowned for expending a lot of energy on proposals that have no chance of becoming reality.
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I think it’s high time that we all stopped believing in the “south Niagara hospital” fairy — and yes, Jim Diodati, that means you. This magic hospital-in-the-sky is, and always has been, a deliberate ploy to get you and the other Mayors to agree to the moving of necessary services out of the Welland General and GNGH. Period. Even Deb Matthews seems to gag at the thought of having to endorse such a ridiculous fantasy when her government is committed to eliminating a deficit within five years. So, please shake off the fairy dust, recover your common sense, and do the job you were elected to do: look out for the interests of your constituents. Get together with other municipal officials and our MPPs, and tell Queen’s Park exactly what they can do with the Smith Report. We CAN get beyond parochialism if we are all prepared to face reality, rather than buy into a fantasy…because it’s not just the “southern tier” (as defined by Kevin Smith to include Niagara Falls) that is going to suffer. St. Catharines, Thorold and Niagara-on-the-Lake residents are soon going to find that their new 375-bed hospital in northwest St. Catharines is not nearly adequate to serve the entire region—they, too, have been sold a pig-in-a-poke.
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What is left out of this report is that the Mayors not only gave Smith 2 choices but they also UNANIMOUSLY AGREED to let Smith make the the final choice. He abided by their wishes and now Port Colborne and Welland are not only crying in their beer but they are going back on their word. Integrity does not appear to be their strong suit.
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Well, Mr. Strugar, it sure sounds like you know Kevin Smith much better than the rest of us. Perhaps you can explain exactly why he chose to pass off a fiction as a fact—because it’s clear he he didn’t have the okay of the Health Minister to start talking about new hospitals. If we’re talking integrity here, Mr. Strugar, try starting with the guy promoting the fiction, rather than with those who fell for it — I mean, what choice did Smith give them?
BTW, thanks for illustrating Doug Draper’s point about parochialism so neatly.
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Where does it say he couldn’t talk about a new hospital? He was sent here to oversee the entire situation and make reccomendations about the entire system to the Minister. That is what he did. Even if, as you wrongly state, that he didn’t have integrity does that give Welland and Port Colborne a “Get out of jail free” card?
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“Get out of jail free” card? What are you talking about? It is my opinion that for Smith to have given anyone the impression that a new hospital for Niagara south could or would even be contemplated by this government was less than honest dealing. In fact, he played everyone for a sucker, and that includes you. You can rub your hands with glee at the discomfiture of Welland and Port Colborne all you like but that’s not going to change the fact that Niagara will have one single full-service hospital to serve the entire region, for the next decade at the very least. Wherever in the Region you live, a hospital that size is inadequate for a population of nearly 450,000. You, Nick, will suffer from the long emergency wait times just the same as anybody coming from Welland or Port Colborne.
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The integrity of Ontario Governments over the past decade or so has a “ZERO”. rating, yet they are re-elected again and again even when they spend countless millions to literally buy seats as this Liberal Government has done so often in the past. They bought the teachers years ago, they cancelled a Power generating source in Oakville at taxpayers expense (cost of Hundreds of Millions) the eHealth Scandal then their was their greatest ploy the acquiescence to private interest groups our most sacred Health Care system. THE GREATEST SHAME IS WE ALLOWED THEM TO ACCOMPLISH THIS FOR THEIR CORPORATE MASTERS. Mr. Smith’s involvement or true lack of such in Niagara was seen by this writer as a ploy by this government to quench the fires of rebellion and insert roadblock in the form of a false promises
REALITY CHECK
THEIR WILL NOT BE ANOTHER HOSPITAL BUILT IN NIAGARA AND MANY ARE STARTING TO SEE THIS TRUTH
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It seems obvious that Badawey and company originally set out to promote a three-hospital NHS, focused around the three main population centres:
– St.Kitts
– Niagara Falls
– Welland
Unfortunately, Kevin Smith is Not from Niagara, and either didn’t realize that “South Niagara” does Not include Niagara Falls, or played loose with the phrase and deliberately confused it with “Niagara South”, the term for the former County of Welland, which Does include Niagara Falls.
He gave us a 2-hospital NHS, when the least we need is 3 hospitals, plus satellite sites in Port Colborne, Fort Erie & Niagara-on-the-Lake, as we have now.
Unfortunately, Kevin Smith has recommended a hospital based upon a big-city model (eg. Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton) and ignored the spread-out, small-town & rural nature of Niagara. His location guarantees a LONGER hospital stay for most people because it will be a major, long expedition for any of their friends to visit them without a car. (We will Never be able to create a regional bus system capable of conveniently serving small-town & rural Niagara.) Medical studies from all over the world will point to longer hospital stays for people who have few visitors to encourage them. Even Niagara Falls residents will do less visiting to family & friends when their hospital is ~10km farther away. Imagine the pressure on the new hospital to discharge patients early in order to meet the provincial average stay!
To address Doug’s comments about parochialism:
Why would One Big Niagara be any different? Representation-by-population would always give St. Kitts and Niagara Falls more seats than the rest of us!
By the way Doug, that’s a super photo of the new hospital … right beside a Railway line … just waiting for a Mississauga or Oshawa rail disaster to happen.
In the event of a railway chemical spill, what plans does the NHS have to:
a/ treat patients with chemical injuries (at a hospital right at the middle of the spill)?
b/ evacuate existing patients to … where (they’ve closed all of the other sites & removed their operating equipment)?
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Anyone who has a synapse in their brain knew long ago what would happen as far as any “super” hospital construction. This has been in the works for decades. I’m sure 99% of the public would have been absolutely pleased to have and support a new hospital as long as it was central. This idea fell on deaf ears and the result is now chaos, all due to the megalomania of a few inept and stupid politicians and CEO’s. The people knew what was best for their own region but why listen to them? The nurses and doctors knew what was best but why listen to them either? We’re only the ones paying for this fiasco both financially and in terms of the services provided. In this age practicality means zip! As long as something looks good on paper, who cares if it actually works? Time to take the bean counters and bureaucrats out of such major endeavours because they are impractical idiots. What they learn in business schools is theoretical and seldom pans out in the real world but they insist that they know best regardless of how often their plans fall flat on their faces, and that is most of the time.
Does anyone really expect to see another new hospital in the region during their lifetime? Did anyone think Niagara Falls would make concessions to the smaller municipalities? They are after all the centre of the universe. Again, a more central site is needed, perhaps at Montrose and Netherby but that was not even proposed. These idiots just keep making the same stupid mistakes again and again.
Furthermore, when a moron like Sevenfigures screws up SO badly, why in hell did she get a severance pay? The woman knows NOTHING about medical practice. She wouldn’t know if it bit her in the ass. She should have been fired just as any other inept employee would have been and certainly not with a golden handshake. The she has the cajones to use her “credentials” as stepping stones to even more lucrative positions where she is equally without ability. Ya’ gotta wonder!!!!
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Three hospitals makes sense, but Smith indicated at his first “official” appearance in Niagara, at the meeting of the Tripartite Committee last September, that he was looking at Niagara Falls. His intention was there all along. all anybody had to do was pay attention.
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Government funding for hospitals is drying up. We’re being set up for privatization schemes which will cost more for everybody. Look no further than the U.S, the world’s most expensive healthcare system.
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Absolutely Mark.
Anyone who thinks that politicians at high levels are not being courted by insurance lobbyists to degrade our previously efficient system in order to create a demand for private services has been duped. We are headed for ugly times where we will get two tiered service, good if you can afford it (with the related massive profits and selective treatment according to ability to pay) and substandard, bare bones care for the rest of us. The same goes for preventative care. It will be cost prohibitive resulting in acute illnesses becoming chronic and thus increasing the treatment costs even further. The US system has been proven defective by all impartial comparisons. Regardless, the Canada health act comes up for renegotiation in 2014 so what better opportunity to muscle in? One only has to look at the misinformation propagated by the US insurance companies back when Tommy Douglas tried to initiate universal health care to believe they will pull out all the stops to try again.
Nick, the NHS also lied to Fort Erie and Pt Colborne when Sevenfigures PROMISED to maintain both as fully operating hospitals. Within a year they were gone. It seems the precedent was set by her does it not?
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Interesting Linda.
May we presume that you will soon be setting up a Facebook lobby to change our existing private-enterprise system to be Fully state-run?
=> You want all doctors to be employed by the Crown, instead of
running small businesses. They would negotiate for union contracts with 40-hour weeks, regular shift-work with shift premiums, and very limited overtime in order to spend quality time with their families, as other union members do.
=> Ditto for the employees of family doctors.
=> Ditto for closing doctors’ offices and having them serve us from Crown-owned offices, where we would accept whoever is on duty, as we do with most government services.
=> You want to remove the right for unions to negotiate and employers to offer private insurance beyond the minimum coverages offered by OHIP.
=> You want to nationalise all drug companies and medical-machinery companies (eg. CT-scan, MRI & operating tool manufacturers).
=> You want to limit which healthcare can be offered to the public so that Nothing more is offered than the basic Medical services provided by OHIP, and only Crown-owned institutions will be allowed to do research and provide innovation.
=> Would you go further than our present system in disallowing any other than the Medical branch of heathcare? Or would you provide coverage for them too under OHIP (Naturopathy, Chiropractic, Reflexology, Clinical Nutrition, Accupuncture, Dentistry, Chinese & South Asian Herbal, to name a few)?
You said, “The US system has been proven defective by all impartial comparisons.”
I hear No one proposing an American system. I do hear people looking for ways to make our existing, basic, one-price, single-payer system Better & more Efficient. A friend did a comparative study of countries with our type of Medical healthcare system and found that Ontario pays ~40% of expenses for Administration versus ~10% for Germany. Think how much more we could do by streamlining! Perhaps we could eliminate Ontario’s $~15B/yr deficit and start paying down our $~200B debt.
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Lorne, nobody is suggesting doctors, nurses, etc. everybody work for the state, but what we’re concerned about is the future accessibility of health care for everybody … how there appears to be more and more health services covered by private insurance, but dropped out of OHIP. Many people like myself (and I am sure tens of thousands of others in the region as well) end up just doing without, as this would be a choice between paying the hydro, keeping the gas on, or paying for a necessary medical service that can prevent a more serious health issue later down the road. Don’t low income people have a right to decent effective preventative health care as well, or do we only get help AFTER we become terminally ill?
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We do not know if Smith, the Minister or McGuilty is lying in this matter. What we do know is that Port Colborne and Welland lied through their teeth when they agreed to accept Smith’s final decision on location.
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Nick, I guess you don’t keep up with the news much. The people of Ontario have had it with the McGuinty government, because it lies and lies and lies again. And nobody in that caucus lies better that Deb Matthews, Minister of Health and Long Term Care. Does that lead me to suspect that we are not being told the whole truth by the healthcare mandarin she has sent in to calm us all down as our hospital services are removed? Yes, Nick, it does. Do you want to know why? Because I don’t give a fig about a new hospital ten years down the road. I care about what Smith wants to see happen NOW. He intends to move services from the Welland General and GNGH to the new St. Catharines Hospital, and to close all existing NHS sites. Another Smith recommendation (on pages 57-58 of his Final Report) concerns disposition of those closed hospitals: municipalities will be allowed to buy them back from the NHS, at fair market value. I kid you not.
Nick — just read the report. It’s all in there for any intelligent person to see.
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This is just the furthering of the original Hospital Improvement Plan, the “HIP” that ain’t so hip. I knew this when I first read it on the NHS website. They are applying principles and ideas that work well for large cities and metropolitan areas, where accessibility is not as much of an issue. Toronto and Hamilton’s solutions will not work here, as there are way too many people here that do not have the means to transport themselves to the nearest hospital if it were all centralized. Proponents of the single centralized hospital don’t get that their proposed location does not have public transit either. Most hospital visits are non emergency purposes, which means that most do not involve an ambulance, and you have to think about the families … when people are in hospital, those that enjoy visits from family and friends tend to get well (and out) sooner than those that don’t get such visits. So, if family and friends do not have the means to get there, we are definitely looking at a two tiered system either way … I would say keep three hospitals, one each in the major cities, and urgent care with access to ambulance for more serious emergencies for the smaller communities, while these same urgent care centres should still have some facilities to do testing, minor day surgeries, etc.
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There’s something a little bit ironic about this “state-run”, “crown” talk when Harper’s Conada is allowing Chinese state-owned companies to buy up our resources and impact our laws and security.
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Lorne, thank you for finding my proposals interesting.
1 – MD’s are currently in essence “employed by the Crown” in that fee schedules, standards of professional practice and licensing are set by the government in cooperation with and input from their professional organization. The OMA cannot set fee schedules without government consent.
2 – They do have a professional association which, while not called a union, set their standards and is paid fees by physicians to protect their interests. That sounds suspiciously like a union to me.
3 – No MD I know works any more hours than they want to. Many have left hospital practice for this reason and have set hours while others have become hospitalists with set hours thus enabling them to know their schedule in advance and allowing them family and recreational time.
4 – As for closing individual offices, many MDs are now using clinics for practice shared with other doctors and, yes, when yours is not available, you get who is on call. Is this a revelation? I have no problem with that although your own doctor may be your choice.
5 – I did not imply that unions cannot negotiate for private extended health care insurance. Where did I say that? This currently exists and I see no reason to change it. That is personal choice. You buy it, if you can afford it, or you don’t. Here again the insurance companies have the upper hand. Since I semi retired 8 years ago and fully retired 3 years ago, my private insurance has skyrocketed from $80 monthly to $200. Needless to say, I will likely have to drop it. Aha! A benefit of private insurance.
6 – Yes, I think there should be tighter regulation on drug and medical companies. They gouge the public for prescriptions. The ration of cost vs production and research is amazing. If this was not so, there wouldn’t be companies making millions annually. Their excuse is always research costs but I cannot recall drug companies going bankrupt. As for medical supplies, they are not unlike buying a screw for NASA. Since it is for the space shuttle a screw that costs 30c at Home Hardware costs $300 for NASA. Same with medical equipment. WAY overpriced.
7 – I also did not say anywhere that only the crown would be in charge of research. Most research is done in University hospital settings and much of the cost covered by public charitable donations, not the government.
8 – I never even mentioned alternative medicine. Of course these other treatment methods could be included on a basis of their proven efficacy. This could be done by the reappropriation of the wasted dollars which amount into the billions due to the ridiculous salaries paid to CEO and government ministers who know nothing about their portfolios, only finance (and obviously they don’t know much about that either).eg Debbie Sevenfigures.
9 – The US system IS ineffective and perpetually ranks much lower on all counts than government run systems, the reasons being profit and inaccessibility. eg:
Bypass surgery, US = @ $60,000 vs Canada = $22,000.
Cataract surgery, US = $14,700 vs Canada $3,300.
* The health care racket – Ralph Nader, Counterpunch.
The US ranks in the low 30’s on the list of “best health care”.
I know several MDs who went to the US seeking big bucks and they returned due to the ridiculous rheams of paperwork and bureaucracy required by and the constraints placed upon them by the HMOs.
The reason our system is currently floundering is NOT flaws in the system but rather those running the system ie corrupt and inefficient governments. If this is turned over to privatization we will just be replacing that with corrupt and inefficient (for the public) insurance companies. Once the insurance companies’ claws are into us it will be VERY hard to extract them. It is very telling to know the tactics they used against Tommy Douglas’ efforts in the 50’s & 60’s. The propaganda was absolutely absurd. I believe this inefficiency is by design, due to both greed and payoffs by those (insurance companies) who have the most to gain with absoilutely no concern for the public. It is up to us to stop this before it is too late.
In April 2011 I led hundreds of protestors including the “Yellow Shirts” and Ontario Health Coalition (with my pipes) down University Avenue past Sick Kids, TGH and the other hospitals of “Hospital Row” to shine light on creeping privatization. In spite of all the networks being there, why did it not make the news? Could it be government censorship? They don’t want us to witness their dirty tactics. The system is not the problem. Those running it are.
My viewpoint comes from working 40 years in the system so I feel I DO have insight. Ask any nurse and they can point out most of the problems.
I hope you will also be active in attempting to maintain and improve our system. It is important to all of us.
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Linda:
I’m glad you agree that we do Not have either a fully socialist or fully private system, but a mix of the two: mostly private people paid by a single-payer (OHIP) to provide health-care.
As well, we have allowed private people to provide coverage Beyond OHIP’s basic offering.
This mix of government regulation & control, combined with competitiion and incentive for innovation has worked well for us, and is certainly far better than the USA.
I’d like to see OHIP stop restricting coverage only to the Medical ‘when-sick’ method of healthcare. Why can’t they cover whatever methods people want to use? I’d wager I save OHIP tons of money with my alternative methods … because it keeps me away from the Medical system. But I either pay for it myself, or find private insurance companies to contribute. And it can be hard to get Revenue Canada to accept deductions for vitamins & other modes of healthcare which don’t have Medical prescriptions. (Strangely, the American system usually covers these areas, where OHIP will not.)
We also agree on the bureaucratic, administrative waste in our existing system. Too bad we can’t get an online blog going on ways to save money, from working & retired nurses, doctors, hospital staff, thoughtful patients & consumers. I’ll bet we could invent several useful ideas and methods,eh?!?
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Hi Lorne.
Thank you for your response. The system worked very well for years and cost much less to operate than at present even considering inflation, wages etc. It can work again AND be improved. It’s sad that the bean counters are in charge instead of the professionals but that seems the way of most things now.
I also give a lot of credit to alternative medical practices and they have often been the sources of many current valid medical and pharmaceutical practices.
There are so many levels of bureaucracy gumming up the works now! All these levels cost money and are inefficient at best.
We do currently have a mixed system but I feel outside interference (the source being obvious) is absolutely the worst influence. The US system is a disaster and one we should never emulate. That would be insane because it is a proven failure except for a select few.
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A special thanks to Harper Conada for the blind agenda:
http://www.windsorstar.com/health/Health+spending+changes+will+hurt+provinces+budget+officer+warns/7311810/story.html
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An interesting aspect to the talk of a new hospital always has the trailer “to replace the aging hospitals in Welland and Niagara Falls”. Odd how in Hamilton, Smith’s home turf, he has managed not to close the far older hospitals, Henderson and St. Joseph’s. Instead they have been refurbished and modernized into state of the art facilities (their words).
Curious the same maxim cannot be applied to Niagara.
There is one thing we know for certain, the Niagara Falls site selection was a done deal. This is simply a matter of provincial politics playing out at a local level. The site was going to go into a Liberal riding no matter what in order to preserve Kim Craitor’s seat. A slight to Welland and the rest of south Niagara will have no impact on the outcome of a future election as it affects staunch NDP and PC seats. McGuinty has basically said “screw you”
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John, I think you’re on to something. Hamilton is the key. Smith is President/CEO of St. Joseph’s Health System, which isn’t a part of the Hamilton Health System, and is getting two major rebuilds.
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Well, I guess you people don’t want a hospital in South Niagara. All you are doing is running down the one person who has some influence on having the government build one. Nice job at attempting to derail our last hope.
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Actually Nick, we all want a hospital in SOUTH NIAGARA.
We don’t want only 1 hosptial in NIAGARA SOUTH (the old County of Welland, which includes Niagara Falls).
Niagara Region has 3 major population centres:
– St. Kitts/Thorold/NOTL/Lincoln,
– Niagara Falls/Fort Erie,
– Welland/Pelham/Port Colborne/Wainfleet(West Lincoln?)
Each center needs its own hospital as at present.
It’s too far to expect rural & small town people to travel, if they’re sick OR if they’re visiting relatives in hospital, whether they do or don’t have cars (this applies in good or bad weather). The new hospital will Always be over-budget: sick people take longer to recover when family & friends are too far away to visit easily.
And wait til your Regional taxes increase to pay for extra ambulances….
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There are two independent hospital entities in Hamilton St. Joseph’s and Hamilton Health Sciences supported by a population of 519,000. The former has 3 campuses and the latter 6 separate facilities plus one urgent care centre. The proposal for lowly Niagara with a population of 431,000 are 2 hospitals, 1 urgent care and Shaver.
Hamilton’s catchment area is 1,138 sq/km., whereas Niagara’s is almost 50% larger at 1,854 sq./km..Hamilton’s hospitals are all accessible by both public transit and superior road infrastructure compared to Niagara. The disparity in healthcare between the two Regions is quite frankly shocking under the current configuration. Why we would accept a proposal that makes the situation worse from every perspective is mind boggling.
Here’s a link to the study on “Niagara Region Neighbourhood Profiles”
Click to access Niagara_Region_Mapping_2009-06-17.pdf
Hell, even a cursory glance at the stats shows a glaring problem with Smith’s proposal as far as negative impacts on the most vulnerable in Fort Erie, Port Colborne and Welland. I do not think it is hyperbole that stating this is bad policy it is quite literally a death sentence.
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Excellent, informed answer from Linda McKellar. A couple of additions: National Pharmacare program would lower drug prices, but any government controlled by corporations won’t want it. Another point: Why didn’t corporate press cover the march down Hospital Row? Answer: the press are owned by huge conglomerates that benefit from corporate tax cuts etc. Corporatocracies are more interested in short term profits than the health and welfare of communities. Insurance companies don’t give a **** if you can’t afford your meds. Nor do they give a **** if, as in the U.S, you lose your house, or die prematurely, because you can’t afford to pay for treatment.
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Good point Mark. and OHIP doesn’t care either when someone has a rare disease – there’s a new story every month or so.
Insurance companies are all the same, whether privately, mutually or government-owned. They pay according to the rules of the contract … and no more. They do this to be able to calculate fair premiums to pay for the claims that they are in business to pay. (OHIP’s ‘premiums’ are taxes, and OHIP has been doing everything it can to reduce coverage & avoid claims to stay solvent. The Boomers are about to start crowding into the hospitals & nursing homes and there may not be enough younger taxpayers to pay the ‘premiums’….)
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As an afterthought, I recall that when I first started nursing we had a supervisor for each shift and a Director of Nursing. There was a CEO but he/she was paid much less and did much more instead of hiring consultants at every turn. (Administrators should administrate, not hire others at considerable expense to solve their problems). Funnily, it worked! We didn’t have Coordinator of this, director of that and all kinds of useless and uneducated (in medical terms) layers clip board operators. We also didn’t have PR people because the care was good, complaints were few and there was a REAL rapport and open dialogue between the staff and patients (now called, for some strange reason, “clients”…another stupid change by bureaucrats. I refused to use the term.) To me “clients” is impersonal and sounds like a business contract. That is not what health care is about, or at least wasn’t in the past.
In more recent times, whenever I saw someone in heels and a skirt without blood or vomitus on their clothes, I knew they didn’t have a clue. These same folks were also ones I never recognized so I realized they were usually without experience. Others were ones who were quite useless as nurses or had connections so they made them supervisors where they could do less harm. In “the old days” the folks who ran things were nurses and doctors and front line practitioners. Get rid of all the name tag morons and the system would save millions province wide and be run by people who actually know their ass from their elbow.
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