Tag Archives: Champlain LHIN

Last week we were in Ottawa publicly challenging the Champlain Local Health Integration Network to treat service transfers from The Ottawa Hospital as an integration decision.

There was a terrific media turnout for the press conference we shared with the Ontario and Canadian Health Coalitions.

Following the press conference, one of the local newspapers, the South Ottawa EMC, contacted Champlain LHIN CEO Chantale LeClerc for comment.

According to the EMC, LeClerc told them the cutbacks don’t count as an “integration,” so no formal consultation or board decision was required.

Cutbacks?

Up until now the Minister of Health and the LHIN had maintained changes at the hospital were about health care restructuring.

Now that health care activists are asking the LHIN to follow process that normally accompanies such restructuring, the changes have become cutbacks after all.

The reality is nobody knows what the impact of these cuts or restructuring or whatever-you-want-to-call-it will be.

The LHIN could require the hospital to come forward and present its plan. That plan should tell us where the services are being transferred to, what the cost will be, and how it will impact patient access.

You might call it health care planning.

Instead we have had a litany of excuses as to why such massive cuts to the hospital and potential privatization of services are not being treated in an orderly and transparent fashion.

Yesterday we learned of another LHIN that required repeat prompting by the local MPP before they would launch an investigation into a northern hospital that was generating considerable community concern.

Is this really how it’s supposed to work?

The Local Health Integration Networks were initially set up to involve communities in the decision-making process around delivery of regional health care.

We have witnessed health care providers, such as hospitals, coming forward to the LHINs with proposals to shift services, identifying how they engaged stakeholders in the planning process before coming forward with a plan for integration.

Recently we contacted the Champlain LHIN to ask if the same process is applying to the recently announced changes to service at The Ottawa Hospital, including the so-called “transfer” of endoscopies and cataract services to unidentified providers within the community.

Much to our surprise CEO Chantale LeClerc replied that no integration is triggered because the hospital was making these changes under the terms of its accountability agreement.

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