Task force brings its ‘fresh start’ on long-term planning for Muskoka’s future hospital infrastructure into new year
MUSKOKA — Cameron Renwick and Don Mitchell seemed optimistic while sitting in a Huntsville hospital meeting room on a snowy January morning.
“We have got a team that is really respectful of each other,” Mitchell, vice-chair for the Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare (MAHC) capital plan development task force, told muskokaregion.com on Jan. 8. “Yes, there is difference of opinion and, yes, those differences of opinion are expressed, but in general this is a group that is focused on, in my mind, doing the right thing.”
The 25-member task force of hospital staff and board members, doctors, municipal staff and politicians, community health-care providers and residents, started working on a Stage 1 proposal for future Muskoka hospital infrastructure and services, as part of the province’s mandated five-stage process, in August.
Any task force recommendations to the hospital board and, ultimately, the province would affect the region’s hospitals roughly 25 years from now.
The proposal would follow the MAHC hospital board’s controversial pre-capital planning stage submission to the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care in 2015 that recommended a single-hospital model for the two-hospital region.
Critics have argued the pre-capital submission had already decided the task force’s future recommendation.
But Renwick, a hospital board member and chair for the task force, was adamant that the task force’s work was not based on the board’s pre-capital decision, which was only an entry point into the ministry’s capital planning process.
“We’re starting fresh,” he said. “It’s a new chapter.”
He said convincing the public the task force was unbiased had been a challenge.
And Mitchell, who was also co-chair for the Muskoka and Area Health System Transformation Council, said that struggle disappointed him.
“I feel sad sometimes that this has been stigmatized with the argument nothing is different and there is no change,” he said. “Personally, I’ve been invited to participate this time around and that’s a big change.”
The pair contended that the task force had a broader membership and worked in a different provincial health-care climate than did the pre-capital submission committee, and it had started discussing distinct options, such as renovating the existing hospitals rather than focusing on new builds only.
Mitchell said he wanted members of the public to know they had the ability to comment, engage and participate in shaping their future community hospital infrastructure.
The task force, since its creation, had met eight times for its biweekly meetings, plus held two in-depth workshops with task force members, hospital clinicians, community providers and hospital board members to discuss possible hospital models, issued a public feedback survey that garnered more than 2,100 responses, hosted a series of public information sessions as well as smaller workshops with health-care providers on data validation, project subcomponents and delivery model options, and met with municipal officials across Muskoka.
The schedule for the new year boasted more meetings, additional hospital model workshops, discussions about evaluation criteria for each model and further opportunities for public feedback, including possible discussions with high school students as potential users of any future hospital services, and more.
The models included: one centrally located hospital; two hospitals each with emergency departments, but with many other services offered only at one site or the other; and a two-hospital model with one in-patient site and one outpatient site.
Renwick noted the location of any future hospital infrastructure is not yet part of the task force’s discussions.
“Of course location plays an important role, but we’re not there yet,” he said. “We’re looking at programs and services.”
But Mitchell noted that, as discussions move forward, conversations on specific issues like hospital location and the local share of future costs would cross the task force’s table.
The province required communities to cover 10 per cent of the construction cost of any new hospital project, plus equipment and furnishing costs. Renwick estimated the local share would range from $80 million to $120 million.
The task force planned to submit its Stage 1 proposal by Labour Day, though the timeline is indefinite.
“We want to get ourselves in the queue,” said Renwick, who noted other hospitals across the province were in similar capital planning processes for their own multimillion-dollar projects. “We’re going to take the time to do the things we need to do, but I think we can meet that goal.”
So when will there be a concrete plan for what future hospital infrastructure in Muskoka will look like and where it will be?
Probably not for years.
Harold Featherston, a task force member and chief executive of diagnostics, ambulatory and planning for MAHC, said amendments were possible in nearly every planning stage.
“We won’t be at a point where we’re putting things out for tender for several years, at best,” said Featherston.
And he, too, stressed no decisions had been made.
“There is an absolute willingness to have an open mind and to take a fresh look at all of this work that is being done,” he said. “And everyone is quite willing to arrive at a new or different decision as a result of this new piece of work.”
MAHC started its capital planning process in 2012.
NEWS Jan 09, 2018 by Alison Brownlee Huntsville Forester