Hospital has fallen off radar: MPP
Crowd calls for more funding and less cuts

By Lisa Rutledge, Times Staff
News
Mar 24, 2009


Cambridge Memorial Hospital has fallen off the government’s radar, but public outcry could help preserve its place as a community hospital, says Kitchener- Waterloo MPP and health critic Elizabeth Witmer.

“I urge you today to do what you can,” she told a standing-room-only crowd that turned out for a rally at the Newfoundland Club Sunday.

Despite being organized two weeks ago by the group Concerned Citizens for Fair Funding, more than 600 packed the club to hear politicians and doctors vocalize concerns about the future of the hospital. Nearly 100 later took their message to the streets to march along Hespeler Road, carrying signs calling for more funding and an end to cuts.

Witmer said she will work alongside Cambridge MPP Gerry Martiniuk in Queen’s Park this week to lobby the Dalton McGuinty government to keep its promises to expand Cambridge Memorial.

“We are going to ask: ‘Will you, in the budget on Thursday, put the redevelopment project at the top of the list?’,” said the MPP.

Cheers followed her comments.

Support for the hospital has gone from a steady whisper to a scream in recent weeks as more have joined the battle to see the hospital receive funding to reflect the city’s rapid growth. Currently, Cambridge hospital receives $279 or one-third less per resident than other hospitals around the province, which receive $730 per resident. Cambridge and Waterloo Region councils have both backed the effort.

The hospital is currently going through an operational review, as ordered by the Waterloo Wellington Local Health Integration Network to resolve a $3.5 million deficit.

It shouldn’t have come to this, contends Witmer.

“If Cambridge hospital were getting its fair share of funding, you wouldn’t have a deficit.”

Doctors have added their voices to the effort, including physicians Dr. Glenn E. Martin, secretary of medical staff at Cambridge Memorial, and Dr. Michael Lawrie, president of medical staff at the hospital. They say 80 per cent of hospitals in Ontario are running in the red but haven’t been placed under the microscope of an operational review.
“They’re not all being subjected to the kind of process we’re being subjected to,” argued Martin.

Lawrie, who noted that medical professionals are committed to raising $100,000 for the hospital’s foundation over the next three years, said local family physicians will enlist the help of their patients by asking them to sign petitions and post cards to send to Ontario Minister of Health and Long-Term Care David Caplan.

“They need to know we’re mad and we’re concerned,” he said.

The local health network, which oversees funding to health services, including the hospital, was also a target for criticism.

Witmer said she has long argued against the government’s decision to form the health networks.

“I said you are simply setting them up as a buffer between you and the people so you don’t have to take the bad feedback,” she said. “Well, ladies and gentlemen, it’s happening.”

But the local health network’s chief operating officer Sandra Hanmer said the organization shares the same goal of creating a sustainable community hospital. She noted the network is also fighting for funding that will better reflect each hospital’s population needs.

Hanmer also disputed claims that the hospital’s expansion plans have been shelved because of the current hospital review and said the hospital has received planning dollars for the project.

She emphasized no decisions have been made regarding program or service changes at the Cambridge hospital, but couldn’t rule anything out. The operational review team’s report is expected in late spring.

Those who turned out for the rally were more than willing to lend their support. As crowds filed into the Newfoundland Club, they lined up to sign Martiniuk’s petition demanding new funding formulas.

Joe Escobar, a volunteer at the hospital’s emergency ward, was one of them.
“I think this concerns all of us,” he said. “We have to let Mr. McGuinty know we are not second class citizens.”

He’s concerned future cuts could have serious effects on quality of care in an already busy emergency department.

“More people are going to suffer.” Sunday’s rally could be the first of many, vow group organizers John van der Heyden and Joe Dwyer.

“We’re going to fight for the hospital,” said van der Heyden. “We’re not going to let it go.”