(December 1, 2016)<\/p>\n
By: Graeme McNaughton, The Oshawa Express<\/p>\n
With the Ajax-Pickering hospital set to join the Lakeridge Health family, something is not adding up for the Ontario Health Coalition (OHC).<\/p>\n
According to a report recently released by the group, the merger will save approximately $300,000 every year. While six-figure savings are nothing to sneeze at, the OHC says it doesn\u2019t make sense when the merger is set to cost $18.2 million. In other words, savings won\u2019t be realized under the merger for more than 60 years.<\/p>\n
Natalie Mehra, OHC\u2019s executive director, says that the ones paying the cost for the merger will be patients.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat cost is coming out of the operational budgets of the hospitals. That means that services have to be cut. When you look at the listing of what they\u2019re spending the merger money on, it\u2019s for management teams to manage the merger, it\u2019s for advertising and PR to sell the merger to the community, it\u2019s for layoffs of staff, and mergers of telephones and email systems and so on,\u201d she tells The Oshawa Express.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all money being taken away from front line patient care to the cost of the merger. That\u2019s just a bad deal, and it doesn\u2019t make any sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
In May, the province announced that the Rouge Valley Ajax-Pickering Hospital would be severed from Rouge Valley Health Systems and merged into Lakeridge Health. With four hospitals soon to be under the Lakeridge umbrella, Mehra says that patients are going to have to travel further for specialized care.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis whole scheme is about rationing services, and merged hospitals in Ontario, the policy is that they are not allowed to have duplication. This means multiple sites can\u2019t have the same services,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat means that when Ajax is thrown into the mix, services will have to be rationed across a much wider geography. Right now, everyone has to go to Bowmanville for their cataracts. Will that mean that patients from Ajax will have to travel to Bowmanville for their cataracts?\u201d<\/p>\n
Mehra says that, when it comes down to it, merging a hospital that serves hundreds of thousands of people into a network that serves an even larger portion of the population just doesn\u2019t make sense.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are 145 hospital corporations across Ontario. There are tons of towns that have 100,000 people, less than 100,000 people, that have their own hospital. There\u2019s nowhere where hospitals serving 200,000 people are merged in with an equal sized town that\u2019s down the highway, no transportation system, no possible way for patients to get from place to place if they\u2019re elderly or can\u2019t drive or recovering from surgery or very ill. It just doesn\u2019t make any sense \u2013 there\u2019s no reason why Ajax can\u2019t have its own hospital,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bottom line is that mergers have cost a fortune, and they\u2019ve never yielded the administrative savings that were promised. This merger, there are no predicted savings \u2013 it\u2019s going to take 62 years to pay off, and that money should be spent on desperately needed patient care and services and not more planning and consultants and management teams.\u201d<\/p>\n