2007

30 apr 2007 1:35 Unlisted movie Wed1310 | 6:32 Unlisted movie Wed1310

10 novembre 2005 Doctor questions lack of secondary health-care facilities
By Martin C. Barry
While lamenting the loss nearly a decade ago of the Reddy Memorial and Queen Elizabeth hospitals, a Westmount physician is wondering why there are still no secondary-care hospitals to serve Westmounters Following the merger of CLSCs Metro, Park Extension and Côte des Neiges last year, the new combined Centre de Sante et de Services Sociaux (CSSS) held its first annual general meeting recently.
Dr. Mark Roper, who sits on the CSSS board as regional coordinator for general practitioners, told The Examiner that despite the merger, the structure of CLSC Metro remains virtually intact. “The same services are there,” he said.
But Roper pointed out that the Westmount portion of the CSSS territory is an anomaly because, compared to other CSSSs in the province, the area doesn’t have any secondary hospitals.
“They all went into the university network,” he said, referring to the McGill University Health Centre and the Centre Hospitalier Université de Montréal. “Indeed, it would be very handy to have the Reddy and the Queen Elizabeth back again as part of the CSSSs.
“It is worrisome for me,” added Roper. “Because within the structure of the CSSSs, you’re supposed to have a secondary-care hospital, and they synchronize very well with homecare and what the CLSCs used to do. You had a seamless movement from
hospitals, to rehab, to homecare services. And that does not exist in our CSSS.”
Roper said that with the importance placed on the new university-affiliated superhospitals, they’re taking on responsibility for more tertiary and quaternary care for as much as a third of the province. “So the big question is: where is secondary care going to occur in our CSSSs?”
Roper said that with the university hospitals contracting for services to large areas, “it is something for us to keep a close eye on—that the whole budget of these hospitals are not consumed by their responsibility in tertiary and quaternary care and that they have resources left to deliver the secondary care.

“It would be silly that you live a block away from the MUHC and you cannot access a surgeon there, while people are flying in from Témiskamingue and Kujuaaq and bypassing you,” said Roper. “That’s something that needs to be focused on.”
At the AGM, Marc Sougavinski, the CSSS’s executive director, said the biggest challenge the CSSS is facing over the coming years will be implementing a sweeping new approach to public health care the province is requesting.
David Levine, president of the regional board which is supervising the implementation of the CSSS system all over Montreal, described some of the concepts the government wants to bring in. Among other things, he outlined a “virtual institution,” which would help manage chronic diseases outside of hospitals through the CSSS agency’s
services..

Sunday Dec 18, 2005

Montreal Children’s Hospital

We take pride in the ever-increasing tolerance and inclusiveness in Québec society. However, the Quebec government last week floated a cost-cutting plan to reorganize services between the city's two paediatric hospitals and the recent moves to emasculate or eliminate the Montreal Children’s Hospital give the Anglophone community cause for concern. This is a superior pediatric health care centre in a world-class university centre. While it is true that two pediatric hospitals in a city of Montreal’s size is rare if not unique, one is led to question whether there is not some of the same thinking involved with the move of the previous government to eliminate the Anglophone suburbs from the universe of Québec.

The idea behind complementarity is to provide more efficient health care by avoiding unnecessary duplication of services. HOWEVER, without any data to support its plan, the government has decided to impose restrictions on both paediatric hospitals with regards to what services they can offer. Thus, for example, Ste-Justine would be the ONLY paediatric trauma centre BUT paediatric orthopedics and neurosurgery would be the exclusive domain of the Children's. This most recent government intervention has elicited alarmed reaction from the Shriners hospital authorities and could well jeopardize the construction of the new Shriners for which the Quebec government, led by Jean Charest, fought so hard. – Go figure!