Orleans Weekly Journal
Published: Friday, June 6, 2008 Health care victory not carved in stone So what are you doing at a provincial Liberal event Walter?” asked a well-known local businesswoman this past Saturday at St. Pete’s High School. As a known Tory I responded, “I’m here because I basically hopped the fence from my backyard and this is a good news day for Orléans. Moreover, the last time I checked, our health care system, as dysfunctional as it can sometimes be, doesn’t verify your party credentials at the admitting desk.” This excessive, but excusable, partisanship was perhaps the only drawback of the recent announcement by provincial Health Minister George Smitherman that Orléans will be home to Ontario’s first family health centre in … well a few years from now. Truth be told, George and I went to the same suburban Toronto high school back in the day. Our aging frames were the subject of some friendly chatter before his announcement, but I digress. So what is a family health centre, or health hub, as the Minister calls it? For our community, it will be a state-of-the-art, 100,000 sq. ft. (or more) facility that will house the Orléans Urgent Care Clinic (OUCC) and Montfort Hospital’s Portobello clinic along with a host of needed, and long-overdue, health services. It will offer MRI and other diagnostic imaging, a lab, pharmacy, day surgery, dialysis, mental health treatment and be home to a family health team, just to name a few. Landing this centre has been a team effort, from our local MPP to members of Team Ottawa-Orléans to several local leaders in our health care community. On a sobering note, the OUCC is still closed on Sundays and there are many families in our midst that still can’t find a family physician. All is not rosy in our little eastern enclave. So $300,000 in funding for the OUCC should aid efforts to attract a few more physicians to our neck of the woods. But it is only a temporary measure. Meanwhile, the Montfort Hospital and the Champlain LHIN (local health integration network) along with local leaders need to get cracking and use the $100,000 in concept funding wisely to build the business plan, identify the land and flesh out the details for our “health hub.” For the real success of this hub will not only be found in the patients it serves, but the economic benefits that it will spin-off. Having over 100 medical professionals working in the health hub will draw other allied health professionals and related services to our community. Ditto for other professions such as financial planners, lawyers and accountants. It becomes a virtuous circle of economic development and a further attraction for families and businesses. A tip of this scribe’s hat to all that have moved this concept from dream to announcement; however, we need to keep the pressure on our politicians and health bureaucrats until the shovels go in the ground and the first patients walk through the facility’s doors. In politics, no victory is ever carved in stone. = = = = = Comments can be sent to Walter Robinson at orleansouttakes@transcontinental.ca. |