The March 1st presentations to MAHC’s Capital Planning Task Force held at the District of Muskoka Council Chambers by sixteen presenters once again provided increased clarity of the wishes of residents & taxpayers within the District & surrounding areas. Excellent media reporting (both local & Regional) has identified many of the key messages of the presenters.
Consistent with much of that reporting, here is CAHHMA’s (Community Advocates for Hospitals and Health Care for Muskoka and Area) take on the bottom line message delivered to MAHC and its Task Force:
You haven’t listened to/respected the community voice! We want to keep what we currently have – 2 full-service acute care hospitals. Please stop wasting time on a flawed vision that over 80% of local survey respondents said they didn’t want and move forward with needed upgrades and improvement now, not 15 or more years into the future. MAHC’s role is to listen to and honour the community’s wishes and expectations!
We launched CAHHMA recently in direct response to MAHC’s ongoing inability to appropriately respect and accept the broad consensus view on the future of hospital services delivery.
For those who were unable to attend in person, or view the taped sessions (https://www.yourtv.tv/node/65716), your CAHHMA team is offering the following point summary view of most of the key messages delivered, and themes or underlying factors identified.
- Consensus community wish is for two full-service acute care hospital sites
- chosen by 80%+ of community respondents to the recent MAHC online public survey
- all 16 March 1st presentations were in support. (Our note: we understand all written public submissions (~45+) to the MAHC Taskforce were also in support – we hope to be able to have access to them at some point as well).
- Municipal leaders have announced very clearly their support for future hospital care centred on two full-service acute care sites (Our note: local MPP is on record as supporting the clear wishes of the community also)
- Single siting of acute care hospital services poses risk to the community
- veracity of MAHC’s PSG emergency transport study
- number of personal stories of local family members who survived life-threatening episodes due to the proximity to acute care services
- published research & literature on negative impact of hospital closures on health and mortality of communities
- jeopardizes the viability of Hospice Huntsville being able to provide appropriate end of life care
- disadvantages the expanding and rapid growing Muskoka senior’s demographic and low income/alone residents
- the negative impacts on and possible departure of local medical professionals, therapist, technicians and nursing professionals
- erodes the delivery of patient-centered care due to access of family, friends and others not being close at hand
- inconsistent with municipal planning principals, hurts local economies
- does not put “patients first”, as per latest M of H broad strategy
- history has shown past hospital closures, consolidations and amalgamations did not reduce total costs, but increased them (per Auditor General report & Ontario Health Collation research)
- hospital bureaucracy & associated costs have grown, while services and front-line staff has been cut
- Single site model costly with long development timeline & with limited flexibility of change; forces a single large cost project, not efficient
- new build single-site acute care hospital capital intensive
- incremental renovation & upgrade of existing two acute care hospital sites is the most capital productive solution, allowing for faster development and flexibility to adapt to change
- preliminary estimates suggest the new build one site hospital model is 2 – 3 times the capital cost when compared to average of 6 other ‘similar sized’ Ontario hospital capital projects
- our hospitals age at the provincial average age of 45 years, (i.e. not end-of-life).
- most provincial hospitals upgrade/add-on & not replace existing facilities
- Province of Ontario financial constraints make approval of a single large capital project (as per Pre-capital planning submission) replacing two ‘middle-age/average-aged’ hospitals very unlikely
- community share of capital for hospital project submitted to the District of Muskoka ($84 – $114M) unaffordable – would place significant financial burdens on already heavily challenged municipalities, and local foundations
- MAHC future hospital planning processes have not been open, transparent to the community; not resulted in community consensus; not been effective; seemly biased.
- continues to create public uncertainty and speculation harming confidence of citizens, hospital staff, medical practitioners, Foundations and local businesses
- focus energy on fixing funding issues, rather than complying with ministry process and perceived preferences
- MAHCs future planning of hospital services for Muskoka has been underway for 6+ years, with little substantive meaningful progress
- exhaustive task forces & studies
- ignoring the consistently stated community wishes and front-line health workers
- talking about our health care tax $, we expect a fair share, reminding politicians of upcoming elections.
- latest hospital new build standards used for existing site upgrades, driving cost up on the two-site models (no known ministry timeline requirement to meet new standards)
- unnecessary criteria skew & complicate things
- MAHC’s latest Capital Planning Task Force – current:
- lacks public transparency, broad public consultation/engagement (Our note: this March 1 opportunity was forced, 7 months into the process)
- failed to respond to results of their own online community preference survey (mentioned above), which also suffered from process issues and bias
- suggested that the Ministry of Health process requirements drive their elongated timelines and burdened process (i.e. have no choice)
- calls for development timeline of 15 – 30+ years into the future, seemly ignoring ministry’s own guidance for 5, 10 & 20 year views; too long to wait for improvements.
It is time for MAHC and their appointed Capital Planning Taskforce to deliver the community’s consensus view as the only going forward planning option – two full-service acute care hospital sites. Stop wasting time & resources on further additional study/surveys/analysis/debate on the other unpopular and unsupported models.