Comments on The Burd Report: Sunday 1 - get out your protest signs

I don't think we'll hear from Delanty on t...

2010-03-15T12:01:11.561-04:00

I don't think we'll hear from Delanty on the hospital issue anytime soon. He aligned himself with the upper crust bean counter types who made these decisions a long time ago, and he isn't about to bite the hand that feeds his election campaign funding puppy.

Greg: great detective work, and great letter to the LHIN. Thank you.

This region is a retirement community and retirees...

2010-03-15T10:25:55.704-04:00

This region is a retirement community and retirees are a heavy burden on the health care system. As this region continues to fight against evolving than you cannot expect the government to continue to sink cash into this deep black hole.
Attract the younger tax base. Let the area grow and stop pretending this is your little corner of the world. Give the Government a reason why it would be impossible to shut this hospital down.
The brutal truth is that the future demand is what these cuts are all about.

Merklin/Dan Your schadenfreude about the hospital...

2010-03-14T21:28:07.764-04:00

Merklin/Dan

Your schadenfreude about the hospital is very reassuring. I realize that Port Hope and Cobourg have been feuding about hospitals and everything else since the early 1800s. At least Shakespeare and Leonard Bernstein turned family feuds into great art and drama, but in the Cbg - PH case it is generally just dreary and tacky. It wasn’t my ancestors that did it, and probably not yours - so why don't we just give it up.

I'm not going unless there's going to be a...

2010-03-14T17:17:02.625-04:00

I'm not going unless there's going to be a big hand-holding ring-around-the-hospital-group-hug.

It worked like a charm in Port Hope.

Forget it folks. The hospital is gone. The watchword now is 'regionality' -and Cobourg ain't in the right region.

Like I said, it's not a hospital. It never was. It's an anchor store for commercial and residential development. And oh yeah...it's a heliport.

And it's gone. All that remains is to disconnect the life support....

Ben: Thanks to your tip about the Revenue Canada ...

2010-03-14T16:59:16.518-04:00

Ben:

Thanks to your tip about the Revenue Canada web site I used it to look at the hospital finances.

I then e-mailed the following letter to the LHIN:

Northumberland Hills Hospital

I am writing as a resident of Cobourg for 12 years (since 1998) and have therefore been here long enough to have lived through the closure of the original hospitals in Cobourg and Port Hope an the construction of the current facility. My wife and I, and family members, have attended the hospital for various medical procedures and our names are on the donor wall, albeit in a minor category, but I am not otherwise involved with the hospital.

I have taken the opportunity to review the financial statements of the Northumberland Hills Hospital for the fiscal year ending March 31 2009, via the public information on the Canada Revenue Charities web site.

The key items relevant to the current situation appear to be Revenue for the year $58,904,326 and Expenditures $60,939,342 leading to a net deficit of $2,035,016 or 3.33% of expenditures.

Yet the hospital is proposing the elimination of physiotherapy, long term beds, diabetes education and the elimination of 30 nursing staff. The hospital proposals are draconian, and appear to be entirely out of proportion to the problem. Having spent 30 years in Canadian private and public sector financial administration I can assure you that almost any Canadian entity, private or public, could if required, make a 3.33% reduction in operating expenses without closing any department, without reducing service levels and without laying off any employees. Normally the public would hardly notice a 3.33% reduction. It is hard not to criticize the competence of the management that is proposing the closures and layoffs.

I am also surprised and upset by the proposal to eliminate physiotherapy at the hospital. I am aware that many people can get physiotherapy privately, sometimes covered by various insurance schemes, but probably not the majority of people who get physiotherapy at the hospital. Thus the proposal to eliminate physiotherapy at the hospital is solving the hospital administration’s problems on the backs of the poor. Is this the future of Canadian health care?

In addition to reducing expenditures the hospital administration could probably raise money, not by increasing “nuisance charges” at the parking lot, but by letting the users of the hospital know what costs for out-patient or in-patient care cannot be covered by government funding. Possibly people with sufficient means would be prepared to provide donations for operational costs, and not just for new equipment, but only if they were consulted and convinced that the financial needs were both genuine and unavoidable.

Probably the role of Local Health Integration Networks is not to get involved in the minutiae of hospital administration, but in the case of the Northumberland Hills Hospital I would hope the LHIN could send the proposal back with the request that the hospital consult with staff, the hospital foundation and public to come up with a better plan.