Get on board the Train of Change

The Scarborough Hospital called a community meeting Oct. 9 to address issues pertaining to the significant transformation Ontario health care will be undergoing in the next few years.

“The Ministry has come up with what they call the Ontario Action Plan,” Carla Flemming, vice president of finance and information, said. “It states the residents of Ontario should have support to become healthier, to have faster access and a stronger link to family health care and have the right care at the right time and in the right place.”

The changes are not set in stone, but they will subsequently affect the way patients receive care, where they receive it and how it’s received.

TSH estimates that within the next three years, the way the hospital is funded will also change dramatically.

“Starting April 1, we became a recipient of Health System Funding Reform as did every hospital in Ontario,” Flemming said.

More recently TSH is working on refreshing its strategic plan in order to provide guidance and information to Scarborough residents.

Anne Marie Males, the vice president of patient experience at TSH, says at this point there are still some things, such as which services will be moved to community clinics, to figure out.

“What has not been addressed is what services we will do less of, what services we can shrink and what we can adjust to allow us to grow and move forward,” Males said.

Males adds that during this process, the community’s involvement is imperative.

“The challenge before us is great and these hospitals belong to all of us, these hospitals are critical infrastructure to our community and everyone in this room pays for these hospitals,” Males said. “It’s important that we get involved and engaged.”

Bill Gaw, a Scarborough resident, says the meeting was informative but did not provide him with any of the information he hoped to have received.

“I think the content is really thin, if you’re going to call the public in you ought to be saying something,” Gaw said. “They are regurgitating what the province has already told us.”

The next meeting is scheduled to take place on Oct. 12, at TSH’s Birchmount Campus.

For more information visit http://tsh.to/

About this article

By: Tatiana Herman
Copy editor: Rebecca Steckham
Posted: Oct 12 2012 2:44 pm
Edition:
Filed under: Community News Science & Health
Multimedia:
Topics: