Submission to the Ontario Health Council on Rural Hospitals
Good morning and thank you for visiting South Muskoka this day, June 11, 2024. It is fitting that we are in the Legion Hall this morning to talk about South Muskoka Memorial Hospital which was the first hospital built in this area and was opened 96 years ago as a Memorial to the war dead from the first World War. The date of opening was November 11, 1928. The hospital then was built on Ann Street where our current hospital remains to this day. In four years, South Muskoka Memorial Hospital will celebrate a full century of service. When it opened those many years ago, it served communities from Severn Bridge to the South, and up to the Sundridge area and from Georgian Bay through to Algonquin Park.
Over years the hospital needed to expand. In 1970 South Muskoka’s bed count was 96. Fast forward to 2005’s amalgamation with Huntsville Hospital has caused more struggles and problems with budgets, staffing, management and more since amalgamation has occurred. To this day the bed count in Huntsville still isn’t as high as it is in South Muskoka, but MAHC’s administration, many of whom have moved to the Huntsville area, seem to be working to pull all funding and services to that region despite their lower bed count, lower population and lower needs.
When Huntsville took control of Burk’s Falls Hospital before amalgamating with South Muskoka, some of the Huntsville Hospital Board members met in Toronto with Ministry representatives and planned to close Burk’s Falls hospital. I was MPP at the time and I walked into their meeting in Toronto unannounced and uninvited and let them know that I would be fighting to keep Burk’s Falls hospital open. Neither Stan Darling the MP at the time, or the Burk’s Falls Board members knew what they were trying to do. Stan checked with his son who was on the board. He said had no knowledge of such a plan, nor was he invited to the meeting in Toronto. After they closed the hospital, I asked the Minister of Health of that day to come and reopen the hospital by shifting the operating funding back to Burk’s Falls which she did.
Today, as I reflect on what happened to Burk’s Falls, and as I see what MAHC is suggesting for South Muskoka, it is easy to draw a direct line to the same outcome of closure so I am here today to share with you that there is a fight on to stop that from happening and further to say that dissolution from MAHC is the best way forward for South Muskoka.
MAHC seems to be depopulating South Muskoka Hospital to make their plan to build their Huntsville monument viable. Despite the numbers that show more patients need beds in South Muskoka, despite the growth projections and history of needs in South Muskoka, MAHC seems to be bent on reducing services in South Muskoka and building a monument in Huntsville with the maximum of services available in a newly classified hospital of more than 100 beds with General Rehab, dialysis, stroke programs, surgeries, MRI and full diagnostic service, cancer care and Obstetrics all in Huntsville which serves a smaller population and a smaller area. MAHC has put a definition in their bylaws to change the catchment area for services at the whim of the Board, which I believe is another reason to dissolve. The scope and practice of that hospital is sure to gain more funding as it becomes dominant and would likely be at the detriment of South Muskoka Memorial Hospital.
It seems an effort to diminish South Muskoka’s programming and allocation of HBAM funding support, MAHC has taken a program that has been in South Muskoka for more than 20 years and asked for a duplication of it in Huntsville in General Rehab beds. MAHC stopped rehab services in Huntsville in 2014. While they have said they are “reducing duplication”, they have created duplication. Is it so they can move the program and funding to Huntsville? That culture seems to be dominant at MAHC and is further evidence that a divorce from MAHC is South Muskoka’s best chance going forward.
MAHC removed Cancer treatments from South Muskoka and sent them north. They told us that the stoke centre needed to be in Huntsville. That is questionable. Stroke patients, need medicine available and imaging if there is doubt. Both hospitals have those things. Doctors have said that MRI isn’t necessarily required for a stroke centre. And if it is, what have they been doing up to now? Further I understand there is a question of whether Huntsville qualifies as stroke centre because their numbers are so low.
MAHC asked for extra funding for ICU beds in Huntsville and we understand from Dr. Tim Ryan’s letter that the funding was provided to Huntsville, but the service wasn’t provided when the need presented itself in a critical care situation. It wasn’t an isolated incident according to the letter from Dr. Ryan and when the doctor called them on it, he was reprimanded, which is also something that MAHC has cultivated. They seem to try and silence any dissent from staff at all levels, and it has been suggested that there have been threats of harassment charges or removal of privileges if there is disagreement with their management style or their plan.
There are problems with staffing in South Muskoka that seems to stem directly from either mismanagement, or an effort to depopulate the hospital. According to what I hear, the need for agency nurses is required because jobs haven’t been posted appropriately in South Muskoka. Staff to patient ratios are higher in South Muskoka and have been worse than they are now according to some of the nurses. Fewer patients per nurse provides a preferred work balance in Huntsville over South Muskoka. Nurses who work both sites have reported to staff in South Muskoka that it is a heavier load in South Muskoka. RN jobs have been reduced and there is an increase in the number of uncertified staff to shore up the lack of help, so the quality of care is diminished.
There is no trust for MAHC. Over recent years, they had decided to build one hospital for Muskoka and that was rejected by all communities. They went back to the drawing board and came up with Site A and Site B where one hospital would have fewer services. The bigger hospital would be in South Muskoka. Our communities rejected that plan as well and caused our community Mayors, now MPP and MP for Muskoka to endorse a resolution by the District Council that was Moved, Seconded and Carried on September 21, 2015 to petition the Province of Ontario to ensure that a full range of core hospital services, including acute care inpatient, emergency, diagnostic, obstetrics and surgical services, are MAINTAINED on a multi-site basis at BOTH the South Muskoka Memorial Hospital and the Huntsville District Memorial Hospital. Our community is endorsing their endorsement with another petition to the district government, that they maintain that resolution and not fund anything less.
MAHC’s current plan will move the services in South Muskoka to Huntsville which has already begun in Obstetrics, Rehab and Cancer treatment. Their plan will allow a quick transition from using your “OHIP card to using your CREDIT” card, with the stroke of a pen. I therefore believe that MAHC should be dissolved. I believe the new plan will ultimately cost more money for local taxpayers and prove to have worse results due to the extensive need for patient transfers that have proven to increase morbidity. For-profit care vs the public system has proven to reduce quality care to increase shareholder revenues. I firmly reject moving in that direction.
The public has a right to know how their tax dollars are spent. The public needs to understand that property tax dollars levied across South Muskoka with an increase of taxes, along with an enhanced amount for those properties valued over $1million will pay the largest portion of local share for reduced services in South Muskoka and will support instead a mega hospital in Huntsville.
We have petitioned the Province of Ontario asking that Board Members be selected in a democratic fashion by the community; failing that, for MAHC to be dissolved and return to two boards, and two completely separate hospitals that agree to work together and be economically responsible by sharing services and purchasing where it is feasible and safe as it pertains to excellent patient care.
Amalgamation is a failed experiment here that is not in the best interest of the bulk of our communities. The day surgeries suggested for South Muskoka are slowly being privatized and we could see our hospital become a centre where again a few wealthy shareholders will decide the quality of patient healthcare based on their bottom line. It is simply unacceptable and UnCanadian.
When South Muskoka Hospital celebrates one century of service to the community, in memory of the veterans that are honoured for its construction, South Muskoka needs to celebrate the highest quality of care, not the cheapest. Families and community members have contributed from near and far in support of just that and as long as we can we need to uphold that value.