Niagara Falls council wants Ontario’s Ombudsman to get involved in the investigation of the Niagara Health System with an eye toward fighting the closure of the maternity ward at Greater Niagara General Hospital.
Council unanimously passed a motion last Thursday to lodge a complaint with Andre Marin, asking him to look into the NHS hospital improvement plan and related decisions around restructuring of health care in the region.
The Ombudsman does not normally have jurisdiction over hospitals but that changed Wednesday after Dr. Kevin Smith, president and CEO of St. Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamilton, was appointed by the province as its supervisor of the NHS.
Marin’s office has oversight of the provincial government, which will soon have control of all seven NHS hospitals. That means the Ombudsman will also have, at least temporarily, some authority over local hospitals.
“We learned there have been precedents set where a supervisor has gone in and deleted the hospital board and [changed] the improvement plans that the board had approved,” said Coun. Carolynn Ioannoni, who initiated the motion.
“It is not beyond hope to think that we cannot save maternity and child and (gynecology) here. Let’s bring Andre Marin in. He hasn’t been ‘pro’ anybody. Everything he has looked at has had huge sweeping changes....Maybe in 10 years we’ll have mothers thanking us for still being able to have their babies here.”
The NHS hospital improvement plan calls for a sweeping reorganization of hospital services across the region by clustering clinical programs into what are termed centres of excellence. Some of the changes proposed in the plan – such as the conversion of emergency departments at hospitals in Fort Erie and Port Colborne into urgent-care centres – have already been implemented.
Other changes, such as the proposed closure of maternity and pediatric wards in Welland and Niagara Falls, are supposed to happen after the opening of the new St. Catharines health-care complex and regional cancer centre in 2013.
Niagara Falls council has long been at odds with the NHS. It passed a resolution back in June calling for a provincial supervisor in the wake of public outrage after it was revealed five C. difficile patients at hospitals in Niagara Falls and Welland had died during a five-week period before the NHS officially declared outbreaks at those facilities.
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