What's the future of Erie Shores Healthcare?

Is Erie Shores Healthcare on the chopping block? Will the mega-hospital plan lead to the loss of programs and services in Leamington?

HayGroup, consultants to the Erie-St Clair Local Health Integration Network (LHIN), produced a report in 2009 that they euphemistically described as a "proactive initiative to identify options for addressing sustainability challenges" at the three hospitals in Leamington, Petrolia and Wallaceburg respectively. Although the wording is a little cryptic, this excerpt from the report is worrisome:

Excerpt from HayGroup report to Erie St. Clair LHIN, 2009

Erie Shores Healthcare is a well-loved county hospital with a 24/7 emergency department (ED) and a wide array of surgical services. According to the report, it serves a total population of 70,000 people living in Leamington, Kingsville, Essex, Harrow, and part of Tilbury. The overall population has not significantly changed since the report was written. However, it is rapidly aging.

In their recommendations for the Leamington area, the report authors described several factors that might make the ED "less viable in the future". The authors acknowledge (pg.17) that closure would be an "undesirable option". Continued overcrowding in Windsor hospitals, lengthy travel distances, and a high degree of family disruption were identified as consequences of hospitalizing large numbers of Leamington-area patients in Windsor. For these reasons, the report authors recommended neither closing the ED nor replacing it with an Urgent Care Centre (UCC) for the foreseeable future, which they defined as the following five years. The "foreseeable future" ended in 2014 In 2015, Erie Shores announced the closure of its obstetrics unit as a cost-cutting measure. This decision was only reversed after large numbers of Essex County residents mobilized in protest.  Is it possible that a hospital location on Windsor's outskirts had already been established when the site selection process for the new single site facility formally and publicly began in 2015? Erie Shores Healthcare ended its March 31, 2019 fiscal year with a $1.3M deficit. Our regional population is aging, especially in the Kingsville area where a "retire here" promotional strategy has boosted the local senior population. Hospital caseloads can only be expected to rise. How will increased financial pressures affect the hospital's future operations?

Potential game changers: Highway 3; Development on Windsor's outskirts

47 km from Erie Shores Healthcare to WRH Metropolitan Campus 50 km from Erie Shores Healthcare to WRH Ouellette Campus

A decade has passed since the HayGroup's report was produced, yet there's no reason to think its recommendations have been forgotten. A new single site acute care hospital on Windsor's outskirts, a little closer to Leamington than Windsor Regional Hospital's current campuses, combined with long-awaited improvements to Highway 3, might pave the way for future program and service cuts at Erie Shores in the name of efficiency. Couldn't this be exactly what decision makers need in order to justify converting Leamington's ED to a UCC with limited hours? How might the loss of a 24/7 ED impact other services currently provided by the hospital? Would Erie Shores remain an acute care hospital? For years, Windsor-Essex residents and politicians have been lobbying to widen Highway 3. Construction of the new single site hospital on County Road 42 -- as opposed to a location that's closer to the region's most densely populated neighbourhoods -- will only further enable our increasingly cash-strapped provincial government to justify further "realignments." Who are the winners? If the mega-hospital plan comes to fruition, and further "efficiencies" are announced in Leamington, almost half of the Windsor-Essex population will lose equitable access to healthcare service under the $2 billion plan: more than 100,000 residents of Windsor's neighbourhoods north of E.C. Row, and 70,000 people primarily served by Erie Shores Healthcare. Will one single site acute care hospital be sufficient to serve 400,000 people? Hospital planners and certain elected officials continue to drive a wedge between city and county residents. This helps to obscure the political and financial motives in play. Perhaps -- if the project is allowed to proceed as announced -- the real winners will be the developers and road builders with secure long-term government contracts, rather than the patients whom our increasingly fragile public healthcare system is supposed to serve.

Surely there must be a better way We're calling for a new plan that equitably allocates the provincial $2 billion investment in improved healthcare services and accessibility for all. The current proposal will prove to be a costly mistake "for generations to come." There's still time to get it right.

In their own words: Weekly round-up of comments from our friends and neighbours

"We all believe in the importance of a new hospital... we just deserve a proper location and a better plan for this region!"

"If the plan doesn’t comply with provincial policy we can’t be surprised that they aren’t releasing the funds and approving going forward."

"I like to refer to a new location as a responsible proper location. A better location implies this one is acceptable and it’s not. Just my two cents."

"There has been a whole new vision of urban growth since the plan for Sandwich south began. Three obvious environmental strikes against it are: increased driving time, decreased population density, and paving over farmland unnecessarily."

"If only one acute care hospital to stay open (which would be selling us all out) then the 42 site is horrific for much of Windsors population.It was the worst thought out location ever. "

"Even the most irresponsible of gov’ts wouldn’t give them planning money when the site has yet to even have approval and that is in the hands of LPAT."

"I was on the train yesterday and started talking to a man in his late 70’s about the mega hospital (lives in Lakeshore, originally from Brampton). He started talking about how disgusted he was that people had to go to London or TO for specialty services, surgeries etc and said this hospital needed to be built so people didn’t have to travel. I went on to explain how the new build won’t increase staff, doctors, nurses, specialty services, new equipment or stop us from having to travel (also explained they have already starting eliminating programs). I also explained the P3 partnership and all that it involved. He was shocked and had no idea. He was definitely not in favour of that."

"Does anyone remember Kathleen Wynne's visit to Windsor? The mayor had said something very similar about being engaged in a conversation about proceeding with the mega and so on. Two of the councillors had spoken up pointing out that there was nothing planned for any of the scheduled, official meetings between KW and city council about discussing anything to do with the hospital. The mayor's response to that was something to the effect of 'oh, it must've been while we were walking to her car' "    -- In reference to Mayor Dilkens' July 23, 2019 photo op with Premier Ford