QHC gains $3.5 million in one-time funding

Changes are still on the way to all four of Quinte Healthcare’s hospitals, but due to $3.5 million in one-time funding, all the hospitals will remain open with 24-hour emergency rooms.

Lou Rinaldi, MPP for Northumberland Quinte West, made the announcement Friday morning in Trenton, where rumours swirled that its hospital would close, or its emergency room would be cut down.

“There will also still need to be changes to all of QHC’s hospitals in 2015/16 in order to become even more cost-efficient,” said Mary Clare Egberts, QHC President and CEO. “There have been efficiencies and cost saving opportunities through a process that began last fall. Some of these were announced in December and the remaining proposed changes for 2015/16 will be taken to QHC’s union partners to start the staff planning process on March 2 and 3.

The funding announcement came as part of Ontario’s ‘Patients First: Action Plan for Health Care’.

“This is one-time alleviation, so we still need to determine how we are going to operate within the reduced government funding for QHC and create a sustainable health care system for the future,” she said. “However, we look forward to continuing to work directly with the Ministry, LHIN and our communities to find the right long-term solutions and have been assured of the ministry’s support for this approach.”

“The QHC board and management absolutely want to retain four hospitals with 24-hour emergency access. We are undertaking a very comprehensive process to help determine how we can best accomplish this,” said board chair Steve Blakely. “There are no pre-determined solutions or outcomes. Thanks to the extra ministry funding for this year, we now have the time we require to start fresh and have a robust community engagement process about the future of local health services, before we need to make decisions.”

Blakey added that since QHC is just one partner in the health care system, he wants to bring together municipal leaders, health care partners , patients and community leaders “to help define what the future of health care should look like in our communities and then work together to make that happen.

“We have been given the opportunity to perhaps create something truly unique to meet the long-term health care needs of our communities,” said Mary Clare. “To make that happen, we need to work together with a focus on building the future. We want to be able to use that interest to create a shared vision for the local health care system that the entire community can rally around.”