Will LHINs be a threat to our rural hospitals?

Many will remember the protests to keep War Memorial and West Haldimand Hospitals open in 1997- 4000 people showed up at the Dunnville meeting alone.

At the time, I initiated a petition urging the government for a policy on rural health care needs.  We succeeded, as our government unveiled the Rural and Northern Health Care Framework- effectively ensuring that rural residents have access to hospitals around the clock. 

Fast forward nine years- the McGuinty government has a new agenda.  Our local hospitals- Norfolk General Hospital, Haldimand War Memorial Hospital, West Haldimand General Hospital, Willett Hospital, and even Tillsonburg District Memorial Hospital- will be lumped into the same health bureaucracies as the larger urban hospitals in Hamilton, and in Tillsonburg’s case- London.

The spectre of closed hospitals, and a long drive to city hospitals in a medical emergency- that’s what Dalton McGuinty’s new health bureaucracies could mean for Haldimand-Norfolk-Brant now that the provincial government has choked off debate and passed its new health legislation on LHINs.
Formally known around Queen’s Park as Bill 36, the provincial government’s Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs) legislation carves the province into fourteen gigantic jurisdictions, with unelected bureaucrats deciding which services should be funded, and which ones should not.

Aside from the fact that these LHINs are huge- one of them is as large as France- they remove accountability from the Health Minister and the Premier.  If a hospital is closed, who takes the blame?  The Premier will blame the LHIN, saying that it was a local decision reflecting local needs.  This is unacceptable- hospitals are a provincial responsibility, meaning that if a hospital is closed, the government of the day should be held to account.

The flaws in this LHINs legislation fall into four broad categories.  They include the irrational boundaries and size, the lack of democracy and accountability, the waste associated with unnecessary new bureaucracies, and the very real danger of rural areas becoming the new health care colonies of the major urban areas.  While these issues highlight the major areas of concern, I feel the threat to local community hospitals could be the most dangerous component.

There is a finite number of dollars that these bureaucracies must allocate for health care needs.  A dollar given to urban hospitals could be a dollar taken from their rural counterparts.

In response to these threats, I have repeatedly raised concerns in the Ontario Legislature.  On February 26, I spoke at length on this issue, calling for consideration of rural concerns.  Again on February 28, I continued to sound the alarm- but this time the government responded with a heavy hand, using its majority in the House to choke off debate. 

The message was clear- the Premier and his inner circle had made their decision in Toronto, and the concerns of the rest of us were just a nuisance. 
In the Legislature I told those assembled I was ‘firing a warning shot across the bow’ if there is any thought of using LHINs to close rural hospitals.

And if a new bureaucracy tries to close our hospitals, the government can expect much more from our area than just a ‘warning shot across the bow.’ 
Remember 1997!  Remember War Memorial and West Haldimand.