Speak now

These are the days decisions are being made about your hospital. They are being made behind closed doors and out of sight. By the time we know what they are cutting, how deeply they are cutting, how radically the intend to alter hospital services in our community—it will all be over.

This is why it is so important for each of us to take some time tomorrow night to lend our support to the Patrons of our County hospital, better known as POOCH. They are your friends and neighbours who, like many, believe the contract between our healthcare institutions and our community is broken.

POOCH is hosting a public meeting at the Picton Legion on Thursday night to voice this community’s concerns about cuts to services and capacity at Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital. The gathering gets underway at 7 p.m.

Meanwhile behind closed doors at Quinte Health Care (QHC), decisions are being made to carve as much as $12 million out of the hospital corporation’s $195 million budget. It’s a lot of money.

It gets worse. To balance its budget, the corporation’s chief administrator figures she will have to lop off as much as $30 million over the next five years—to balance its budget.

Calculations are being made right now about how to do this. Financial, political, operational and marketing implications are being assessed. There will be no community consultation.

Instead, once the plan is finalized and approved by QHC, the South East Local Health Integration Network and health ministry officials, it will be released as a finished product. Then the marketing will begin.

QHC and SELHIN officials will fan out across the region to tell us this was the best they could do. They will tell us that healthcare is changing, and we need to change with it. They will tell us, with as much sincerity as they can muster, that this will be better for us, for our children and for our parents.

They may even believe it.

But we live here. We know how much our hospital means to us and our neighbours. We know how important our hospital is to our doctors and healthcare professionals. We have seen our beloved community hospital diminished year after year to support Belleville General (BGH).

We believe the cutting at PECMH and Trenton Memorial must stop. For more than a decade these community hospitals have borne a disproportionate share of the burden of cost and service reductions.

Cut any further, we will no longer be able to call these places hospitals.

Instead, it is time to re-examine the role BGH can and should play in this region.

For a decade, we have watched hospital services, once delivered in the community, centralized in BGH. Perhaps we centralized these services in the wrong place.

About 70 per cent of QHC’s budget is consumed by BGH. The pressures to rein in healthcare spending won’t let up this year or next. The factors driving costs higher—an aging demographic, increasing use of technology and the escalating cost of human skills—are unrelenting.

It seems when folks in this community require acute hospital services, they are sent, more often than not, to Kingston. Not Belleville.

Last winter, separate ambulances transported five premature babies to Kingston because BGH didn’t have the doctors to cover the shifts at the hospital. Instead of risky stopgap measures, let us, for example, return maternity services to our community hospitals—let Kingston care for high-risk pregnancies and deliveries.

It is unrealistic, given persistent funding pressures, to expect BGH to provide the same level and breadth of care as Kingston General. It seems more sensible, more achievable for BGH to transform itself into a good community hospital, in a truly integrated way with PECMH, Trenton Memorial and North Hastings. Otherwise BGH will continue to flounder—only managing to stay afloat by cannabalizing neighbouring hospitals in Picton and Trenton. It is a dead end.

Thirty million dollars from a $195 million budget will be transformative. If the only tool we own is centralization— then we need a broader community discussion about whether we consolidate acute services and capacity in Belleville or Kingston.

As QHC officials make their calculations behind closed doors, let us remind them we are the only constituency that matters. We pay the bills. We fund the bricks and mortar. We buy the equipment our doctors and healthcare professionals need.

Let us gather tomorrow night to ensure they hear the voice of Prince Edward County.

 rick@wellingtontimes.ca

Consider also the Prince Edward County Hospital Foundation’s Valentine concert, All you need is love, at the Highline Hall at the Wellington District Community Centre on Saturday night. Hear all your favourite Beatles songs performed by a live band. All proceeds from this fundraiser support your County hospital.