Capital Plan Development Task Force Update #28, submitted by Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare
The Capital Plan Development Task Force would like to thank all those who attended the March community information sessions and/or took the time to respond to a feedback survey about the building design options.
A total of 140 responses were received. Common themes for each of the building options were summarized into a report that was presented to the Task Force at its April 8 meeting. Common themes focused on cost and affordability of the options, while also weighing in on the disadvantages of access to care during renovation. Although options seemed to rank differently for respondents, the Task Force determined from the feedback that generally all options seem reasonable and would meet the needs for future hospital care. The full report can be read here (PDF).
The Task Force discussed the initial construction cost report. Revised figures were shared as a result of standardizing the potential space needs associated with onsite community partners to ensure that the option costs are equally comparable. The Task Force reinforced that cost estimates at this point are directional to inform its evaluation of the building design options, and will continue to be refined after preferred options for each of the Two Acute Sites are selected, and on a goforward basis at each stage of the capital planning process.
Work continues around the ‘local share’ component as meetings involving elected officials and stakeholders from each Foundation are taking place to help determine local share requirements and identify opportunities and strategies to raise the local share. Beyond the construction costs of the options, it is recognized that fixtures, furnishings and equipment are substantial additional costs to be funded by the local community. A detailed analysis of these needs is underway to further inform the potential total magnitude of cost for the building design
options before the Task Force completes its evaluation of the options.
With the continued dialogue occurring with respect to costs, affordability, local share and the potential to scale or phase construction, the Task Force acknowledged its recommendation is not likely to come forward to the MAHC Board of Directors before the summer of 2019.
The Task Force is awaiting a call of the chair for its next meeting once details and information resulting from the local share working group work become available.
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Susan Keetch you are so right. We do need a full time walk in clinic. My doctor has a note in the office that if you do not have an appointment then for you to go to emerge. Pretty sad. So even having a Doctor doesn’t always work out the way I would like.
Erin, I think you nailed it, and Ralph is accurate, as well.
12-hr nursing shifts became popular around 1980, and initially
offered incentive of 40 hours’ pay / week, for 36 hours worked,
considered ‘full time’, and included full benefits.
I can’t speak to what was happening in Canada, back then, as I was in my young twenties, nursing in the US. But, Ive always wondered if
this was connected to the exodus of Candian nurses to seek US
nursing jobs. No nurse I know here, seems to recall ever hearing of
the “36 for 40” incentive program in Canada.
Over the years, that ‘incentive’ pay eroded and ceased, but so many
nurses had become accustomed to the ‘3 day work week’, I watched as they accepted that loss and continued to work. I recall administrations
citing ‘financial strains’ to justify taking this money incentive away from
nurses. As if nurses were “a dime a dozen”, they could always get more.
Nurse Aides were eliminated, when ‘Primary Care Nursing’ came along,
under the clever guise of ‘continuity of care’. The RNs could ‘do it all’ —
assess, pass meds, monitor wounds & dressings, bathe, feed, change
linens, reposition, clean excrement & vomit, transcribe & process orders,
collect specimens, transport pts. for tests & surgeries, answer phones;
somewhere in there, the RN would provide emotional, psycho-social
support, and explain to patients and families those questions they had,
which their doctor had failed to do, in terms they could comprehend.
Oh, and nurses sqeezed-in a 15-min ‘break’, and lunch, if they were lucky. Forget writing ‘Care Plans’– schools taught us to do them,
but they rarely materialize.
Administrations sold this, by promises to ‘reduce the patient load from
15 pts. per RN, to 6 per RN. By combining the tasks of Nurse Aide and
RN, their coffers gained all that money they were paying the Aides for
benefits. A small portion of that covered hiring one more RN. It made
everything sound just peachy. (Reality struck, when just one RN called in
‘sick’, and the Bosses refused to approve overtime, to try to replace the RN, OR, there simply was no one who would come in on their day off….
Guess who picked up the slack? the ‘extra patients’ ?) An RN was now
responsible for 9 or 10 pts’ “Primary Care”. ALL shift.
“Do the Best You Can”, they’d say; then, they would refuse Overtime
pay, to nurses who had to stay late to complete charting.. go figure.
These days, people scratch their heads and ask why more young people
aren’t entering nursing careers, why Canadian nurses are looking elsewhere for better pay and working conditons, less stress. I keep hearing “It’s the same, everywhere.” (Where did my $150/month Union
Dues get spent? Ask how many Nurses are in Ontario, and do the math…. a boat load of cash, is our Union really working to improve our workplace conditions?
It’s wonderful to have this Doppler forum for us locals, especially
our nurses, to be able to express thoughts and opinions without fear.
I believe a year-round walk-in clinic would be the best thing that could
happen to this town. Do we need to start a petition, for one? Then, to
Whom should we address it?? How many years of hoops and hurdles,
committees to study it, debates over location and costs of these ‘studies’,
will THIS cost us taxpayers, before it actually happens? Who could
oppose this?
Which doctors would be willing to run it? May we have a guarantee
that it will NOT be affiliated with our hospital administration?
Looking FW to ideas & comments…
I moved up here 8 years ago and I feel the same way. I also do not have a doctor, although I am very satisfied with my Nurse Practitioner, but the town could use a walk-in clinic for everyone, living here all year or visiting at any time of the year !!! Bracebridge has 2 walk-in clinics so what’s wrong with Huntsville !!! Susan put it nicely.
Thanks Ralph. Those who truly care about the patients are, for the most part, the nursing staff. And no one much cares about the nurses as they do their difficult, demanding jobs for a small fraction of what the administrators of the healthcare system are paid. They overload the nurses with work, “challenging” them to exhaust themselves with 12-hour days (because it saves the hospitals money that then gets circulated back into the very high salaries of hospital administrators). Does anyone care that nurses frequently end their work days feeling that they did not do the best nursing care that day because of the hospital overload?
Susan.
Maybe you were not in Huntsville at the time? but about 20 years ago one of the local Doctors did setup a walk in clinic. The hospital emergency was over run especially in the summer and you were waiting 7-10 days to see your family Doctor. If I remember correctly he was accused of taking patients and money away from the other Doctors family practices and the more crowed the emergency dept. was the more funding the hospital could claim from the government.
The sick were of no concern? Profit, income was. Doctors are a business first , patients are a byproduct that creates this business/income.
I am sure there are others out there that remember this situation and might chip in with other interesting info?
I think it would be more important to have a year round walk in clinic that to be so connserned about the design of the exterior of a building. We moved full time to Huntsville last year and shocked to find out that there was only a clinic in July and August. There has been so much debate around the hospital and I think that with a year round clinic it would take a lot of pressure off the hospital and expense for non-emergency medical events. A friend of ours went to the hospital 4 times waited hours and was instructed to follow up with his own doctor. Unfortunately he doesn’t have a doctor because no one is accepting patients. If there was a clinic people would likely go sooner than waiting until they were much worse and then going to the hospital. July and August are not the only times that Huntsville population increases. People are holidaying all year round. The population is increasing as well. Think about serving the people and maybe less about arcitectual appearance.