The Sydenham District Hospital board believes Wallaceburg’s hospital has been missing out on some funding for the last four years.
Sheldon Parsons, chair of the SDH board, discussed details of an e-mail he received back from the Ministry of Health about the criteria for small, rural and Northern hospitals.
“It outlined all of the details with respect to not only the funding under the special program for small and rural hospitals, but also the confirmation of how relatively easy it was to find out what happened to the small and rural classification that we had in 2012,” Parsons said during a May 18 SDH board meeting at the Sydenham Campus.
“We have been constantly told, nobody knew anything about it, nobody understood what the process was… it took one phone call for me to find out exactly what the process was.”
Parsons said the Sydenham Campus lost its small, rural and Northern status when the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance reported SDH in combination with the Chatham campus, as one hospital.
“We believe that someone either didn’t understand things or they were purposely misleading this board as to what the circumstances of the situation was,” Parsons said.
“It is clear to me and it was made very clear to me from two officials that I spoke to that this classification can easily be restored, all that has to happen is the CKHA reports the two sites as two sites, as opposed to the two sites as one. That will automatically put us back under the small, rural and Northern healthcare format.”
Parsons said the e-mail he received from the Ministry of Health said in order to receive special capital funding under the small, rural hospitals framework, you had to be both small and rural.
“Small is if you had less than 2,700 waited cases, which we do… but to be rural you had to be more than a 30 minute drive at posted speeds to a community with a population of more than 30,000,” he said.
“Whether we are more than 30 minutes, or 30 minutes, than we would’ve qualified for additional funding under this special program for small and rural hospitals. That apparently was not something that our professional staff was aware of.”
Parsons said the criteria disappears in 2017, as the special funding is no longer available.
“It then becomes, if you have less than 2,700 waited cases you are a small, rural and Northern hospital and therefore eligible for different funding streams,” he said.
“We have missed out on that funding stream for four consecutive years.”
Parsons added: “It was done differently in 2013, than it was in 2012 and that was the direct reason why we lost that classification. During those four years, small rural hospitals received a 1% increase in funding, while larger hospitals received a change in the funding formula and that harmed the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance. We have been fighting deficits from that point forward.”
Herb John, an SDH board member, said during the meeting he is surprised a Freedom of Information request he made a couple of years ago, did not provide this information to him.
“You said it was an easy answer to get and all it took was one phone call, but I’m still puzzled as to why the Freedom of Information report request I did in 2012, early 2013, did not reveal those facts,” he said.
John said he is going to look into this further with the Ministry.
The Sydenham District Hospital board is meeting once again tonight (Wednesday, June 1), here is the agenda:
