A voice of reason or a double standard?

Selective memory and the debatable validity of old data

When just last week, local media turned our July 28, 2019 eblast into a major news story, Janice Dawson, CEO of Erie Shores Healthcare and Leamington mayor Hilda MacDonald quickly rallied to reassure the public that the small community hospital's services are not currently at risk. On August 7, 2019, in a flurry of Facebook posts, Windsor Regional Hospital (WRH) CEO, David Musyj commented: "The report this small group relies upon is publicly available - commissioned by the LHIN to focus on many smaller community hospital EDs across the LHIN - written a decade ago in 2009 - has ZERO to do with the new acute hospital located in Windsor to serve the region which was not even discussed until 2012  ...."

A double standard or just selective memory? It's especially baffling Mr. Musyj implied the 10 year-old HayGroup report is obsolete. If so, why did he endorse 20+ year-old population and economic projections in order to justify the zoning plan for Sandwich South (approved by Windsor City Council one year ago on August 13, 2018)? The data used to greenlight the development of Sandwich South and the County Rd 42 single site hospital plan was based on a 2008 study by EDP Consultants. In EDP's study, the consultants relied on data from the 1996 and 2001 Census and a 2008 report by Lapointe Consultants. Was it a done deal, long before any public announcements? Mr. Musyj, in his public responses to our questions about the fate of Erie Shores Healthcare, apparently overlooked a June 2009 Master Plan that identified a new greenfield site and demolition of Windsor Regional Hospital (now called WRH Met Campus) including the 2001 Regional Cancer Centre, as its preferred option.

Healthcare investment is needed in Essex County, beyond Windsor For those who didn't look past the alarmist local headlines: CAMPP advocates for an alternative regional healthcare system plan; one that includes provincial investment in Essex County, beyond Windsor's boundary. Additional investment in Erie Shores Healthcare could provide more accessible programs and services closer to where rural residents live. More than a few members of the public noticed the irony - (or "hypocrisy,"  as one commenter put it) - of defending a small community hospital in the centre of Leamington (total pop. 28k) on the one hand, while promoting a plan to remove two accessible acute care hospital campuses from Windsor's (total pop. 217k) most densely populated and established neighbourhoods, leaving the city centre (pop.100k) without hospital-based acute care services. If implemented as proposed, the current plan will leave half the City's residents with only an urgent care centre (UCC) and outpatient services. This will severely diminish choices to address their healthcare needs. There will no longer be 24/7 services in the heart of the community. No inpatient beds. No ambulatory care. No accessible Emergency Department (ED) treatment for life-threatening conditions or follow-up referrals.

Robbing Peter to pay Paul The Windsor-Essex Hospitals Plan will actually provide rural County residents with a choice of three acute care hospitals depending on where they live: the proposed single site acute care facility on County Road 42, Erie Shores Healthcare in Leamington, and Chatham-Kent Health Alliance, the hospital in Chatham (east of the County line). Meanwhile, people living in the City of Windsor will be disproportionately disadvantaged with the loss of accessible acute care hospital services, especially those dependent on public transit or living on fixed incomes. Let's not forget the additional infrastrucuture costs that will be carried in perpetuity by city dwellers for this major outward expansion. It doesn't make sense if making healthcare more accessible to rural residents makes it less accessible to urban residents. We need a better plan. Measurement by a different yardstick? A 2013 HayGroup report (page 139) -- the same report that led to the initial decision to eliminate birthing services in Leamington -- allocated the following scoring to justify keeping Erie Shores' ED services:

Were these same criteria evaluated when deciding to replace Windsor's current acute care hospital campuses with an urgent care centre? Was 30% of the Windsor scoring devoted to impact on the local community, as it was in Leamington? There's no indication this was ever done, based on public comments by Bob Renaud, Chair of the site selection committee for the new single site acute care hospital.

According to the January 6, 2016 Windsor Star:

Renaud said the province required the site-selection committee to consider the regional aspect of the facility. He acknowledged the committee did not consider what effect removing two hospitals might have on the city core, however, since that was not one of the criteria his group was asked to assess.

But he said both top locations [The #1-scoring GEM site and the chosen County Road 42 site] would serve a mega-hospital well. “These two sites were really great sites,” he said. “We all felt good about them.” It was a fatal flaw of the site selection process to not consider the effects on the heart of the City of Windsor. Leamington got it right. Windsor didn't.

Why not create a better, more cost-efficient plan? We need an improved planning approach to serve our future regional healthcare needs that is based on contemporary demographic and economic data. Given our geographic disparities, with rural residents scattered over an extremely wide area and more than half the regional population living in more densely populated urban neighbourhoods, a one size fits all design isn't in anyone's best interests. Why not...? Invest in Erie Shores Healthcare by adding to its programs and the number of inpatient beds. This will help anchor the community hospital's ongoing future viability. Add further healthcare supports in the form of one or even two UCCs and/or outpatient services in the bedroom municipalities.  This approach could reduce the pressure brought by county officials to locate the new single site hospital on Windsor's undeveloped outskirts, in spite of solid environmental, social and financial reasons to build the new facility in an established neighbourhood where the municipal infrastructure already exists. This will help ensure a cost-efficient solution for current and future Windsor-Essex healthcare needs. We would hope our elected representatives will bring our ideas to Premier Ford's attention when they meet this month.

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

"It is with some hypocrisy that the Leamington contingent wholeheartedly defends the hospital nestled in its neighborhood while endorsing the overwrought consolidation of healthcare services (mega-hospital) elsewhere to the detriment of everyone else in the county including Windsor... "

"How can a city of 217,000 people lose their emergency rooms to be replaced by urgent care while a town of 27,595 people not be at a similar risk?"

"Come up with a plan that reflects modern urban planning, adheres to ont planning policy and windsor's own planning policy and there would be no lpat appeal. It's your own doing."

"We need modern, accessible care near the city centre; we need re-development near the city centre; we need an urban plan that works for the entire region and respects the legacy of the city of Windsor, where most of the population lives and works. This plan is not sustainable, it is destructive and short sighted."

"It is my hope that the provincial government will give it a well thought out second look. we want to insure what ever tax dollars are spent are wise and lead to improvement not only in health care but to the strengthening of the urban centre which is Windsor. Let us not throw out decades of planning and infrastructure improvements to create a new sprawling development while the centre is let to wither and die."

"Not all of us in the County agree with the chosen location of the Mega hospital. Some of understand the importance of saving our farmland for future generations. Curbing urban sprawl is the mandate of the Province and this location goes against this. Perhaps we need to form a greenbelt coalition before it's to late."

"I'm still waiting for the County municipalities to offer to help pay for the infrastructure and transit improvements that this site will require. It wouldn't make up for what is ultimately a mediocre plan for the entire region (my preference would be to completely renovate Ouellette campus and build a second hospital in the County), but as it stands right now many of the added costs (infrastructure, etc.) will be on city residents who frankly are only getting decreased accessibility."

"Hospital in Leamington should expand and modernize."

"I think it’s fair to say we all want what’s best for our community but have very different ideas about how to get there."

"I thought one reason for a mega hospital was tied into University of Windsor. So why put it so far away students will spend hours travelling back and forth."

"Removing the city’s hospitals and placing one on the fringe, encouraging more sprawl, will be the death knell of Windsor’s heart."

"I’m concerned about the way it’s being railroaded through , telling the public that it’s a done deal."

"It literally only benefits those out in the county and well off people in Windsor who can manage to drive there. It's going to be an absolute mess for other people in Windsor, that's why it's debated so heavily. I'd have to take a bus there or pay for a ride and I'm not looking forward to it."

"We saw a deer on the other side of the road of the proposed Mega yesterday. There is so much brown space in Windsor. It's all politics and we will still be waiting for care while they dig up there and all around it. There is money in this for the wealthy and those that make it happen."

"No one is arguing that this region deserves a new hospital or that patients deserve access to the best healthcare possible. The problem is the proposed location does not make sense from a social, financial, or environmental perspective. Why invest 2 billion dollars knowing that it is not a sound plan. Let’s get this right because the future depends on it!"