Travel times for acute care may get much longer
No-one in Almaguin wants to see Huntsville’s hospital relocated further south. It’s just too far away for people in need of acute care to travel.
So, it was disturbing when cards generally played close to the chest seemed inadvertently laid on the table last month.
Hospital representatives officially asked the regional Muskoka government for $114 million within the next 15 years to partially fund new hospital infrastructure.
Health-care organizations asking for millions of dollars isn’t surprising; they need the money to provide the health care we deserve. But who Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare asked and when it asked are surprising. The money requested was said to cover the local share of the costs that will be needed to build a “future asset.”
Asset. Singular.
Our eyebrows hit the ceiling.
Rarely does a single word carry so much meaning.
Here’s the thing. We wonder how the organization can be asking for funding for a future build while they are still deliberating upon what they plan to build. We hear the two-hospital model is still on the table. Is it?
Board reps have even noted renovations of the two existing hospitals is one of the options still being discussed.
Our health reporter detailed the meeting in an article and the district got letters. Those letters are published online at northbaynipissing.com and in the pages of this newspaper. Penned by prominent community members, at least some of which we have heard from in this debate in the past, the missives say there is alarm and discouragement because the implication was clear: the request is for one new hospital. The public wants two enhanced acute care hospitals.
And why must hospitals go, cap in hand (pistol in pocket), asking regional governments for funding anyway, regardless of future plans?
Municipalities have enough on their plates without having to fund health care, nor are they equipped with the necessary revenue generating tools to do so. The ministry should reduce or eliminate the provincially mandated local share of any future hospital build, which is 10 per cent of hospital construction plus the cost of equipment and furniture.
The hospital board pulls the local share concept out like a gun often enough when this debate rages. The impression it gives is the community needs to toss out its expectations and accept double-barrelled hard, cold fiscal facts; we cannot afford the health care we want. They just don’t have the money to keep two hospitals, it seems to say.
We reject that argument and put the responsibility for funding adequate acute care squarely where it belongs — on the province. The people of Almaguin deserve access to health care closer to home.
OPINION
Feb 09, 2018 Almaguin News