Us and them

Your voice matters. Politics matter. It is all that stands between your hospital and an empty building. It is all we have. Yet it may not be enough. Bit by bit, our hospitals in Picton and Trenton are being dismembered to shore up the finances for the hospital in Belleville.

Even the most spirited and energetic voices from Prince Edward County and Quinte West are not likely able to sustain the struggle long enough to stop the slow-motion destruction of our community hospitals. Our hospitals. Stripped from the community—for money.

To be absolutely clear—diminishing Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital (PECMH) and Trenton Memorial (TMH) was always about money. There were no higher principles. Not ever.

Despite years of lecturing from QHC administrators and their richly compensated consultants that this ‘transformation’ was about better health care, the sad truth is now laid bare. Our hospitals in Picton and Trenton were sacrificed simply to fund the grand ambitions of an engorged bureaucracy that has ballooned between the patient and the taxpayer.

This week, QHC renewed its commitment to four hospitals—but in an splendidly Orwellian twist, redefined the term hospital. Now BGH is the real hospital—North Hastings (NHH), TMH and PECMH are something considerably less. In QHC-speak, PECMH, TMH and NHH are primary hospitals. BGH is a secondary hospital.

Primary certainly sounds better than secondary. That is until you read that QHC defines a primary hospital as an emergency department, some diagnostic gear and an undefined number of inpatient beds. That is it.

The good news is that we will all enjoy “efficient access to BGH specialist services.” Essentially: don’t worry or fuss about the loss of services in your community, because they will be better in Belleville.

This likely comes, however, as limited comfort for those living with chronic conditions in Milford or Cressy. Conditions like old age.

QHC will, for now, leave behind some scope procedures in Picton and cataract surgery in Trenton. But we all know how this movie ends. When the current budget crisis is resolved, another will follow. QHC administrators will be back in Picton and Trenton to explain how they are improving health care in our communities by taking it away and moving it to Belleville.

To be clear, PECMH was never a competitor to BGH. It served a distinct and complementary role to that of hospitals in Belleville, Kingston and even Toronto. That role evolved in this community, shaped by the financial contributions and volunteer efforts of the residents of this community— to serve their specific needs.

PECMH and TMH never had ambitions to rival BGH—but rather to serve their communities efficiently and with the compassion that comes when looking after your neighbours and friends.

We must acknowledge, with disappointment, the chilling significance of QHC’s decision to redefine its hospitals as us and them. Not long ago, QHC administrators touted its four sites as pillars of strength. Each to become centres of excellence in specialized care and treatment in addition to their traditional role as a community hospital. It is not clear these administrators ever believed this, but they certainly said it loud and long enough.

But now, even that pretense has been abandoned. Its four sites are now seen—inside QHC’s administrative hallways—as anchors dragging them down. They believe the current funding formula that defines the amount of revenue they receive from the province each year is less than it would be if they were simply one hospital.

The formula punishes inefficient hospitals, forcing them to compete for dollars based on their ability to do more with less. QHC believes it could compete more effectively if it weren’t dragging three geographically dispersed hospitals in tow, two of which still strive for independence 17 years after amalgamation. PECMH and TMH used to be just a manageable irritation for QHC administrators—now these hospitals are seen as the problem. So it is us and them.

And yet it is too easy to lay the blame at the feet of these administrators. Mary Clare Egberts is just the current embodiment of Bruce Laughton and the like. The next QHC administrator, when that day comes, will almost certainly continue the pattern of centralization of hospital services and the destruction of community hospitals in order to the fund and insatiable hunger for new technology, new buildings and new offices in Belleville. It is their job. They are merely puppets of the Ontario healthcare regime albeit well-compensated puppets.

It is only your voice that has kept PECMH and TMH alive these past 17 years. If QHC believed it could have gotten away with it politically, our hospitals would have been shuttered already. If Queen’s Park bureaucrats believed they could survive the public outcry that would follow, there would already be plywood over PECMH’s windows and doorways.

So we must continue to resist.

QHC has now shaken off all its old pretenses. It is now us and them. The vise squeezing our hospital will get tighter still. How will we respond?

rick@wellingtontimes.ca