SDH board seeking legal advice

In the wake of the Chatham hospital boards announcing their intention to terminate the ‘Alliance Agreement’, the Sydenham District Hospital board is seeking legal advice.

“This relates to a matter of an issue that is confidential,” Sheldon Parsons, chair of the SDH board, told the Sydenham Current.

“It has been labelled as confidential by the two boards in Chatham and we were honouring that label of confidentiality. We have been receiving legal advice as to what our response should be and I am waiting for that legal advice before we proceed any further.”

Parsons added: “I really can’t comment on any details at this point. Apparently though Jane (Havens) is quite happy to share details.”

Parsons said he hopes to have more details available for their Annual General Meeting, scheduled for June 23.

“The SDH board and all of our members and I would say a vast majority of the public in the Sydenham, Walpole and St.Clair District, support our moving forward with our vision,” Parsons said.

“We are putting the finishing touches on that. We are doing consultations with healthcare providers and again we expect to be in a position to present a refined version of that vision at the AGM on June 23.”

Parsons said he doesn’t believe the steps taken by the other boards will deter their vision from moving forward.

“What we are proposing is what the Ministry wants small communities to do,” he said.

“Integrate, co-locate, make sure you have a single location or a single hub where people can expect to be able to receive a broad range of health care services. That’s our goal, that’s our vision and that is our path ahead.”

“We are not going to be deterred by that. The proposal that the other boards have made can’t be approved simply by the three boards or the Alliance, if it ever meets again. It has to be approved by the Minister of Health. That’s a long process to undertake. So we expect that we will have refined our vision and we will have gotten the support of our membership at the AGM and move forward with that.”

After conducting a confidential consultation with ER physicians and with family physicians in the area, Parsons said they acknowledge that there has to be a “healthy supportive role between the Wallaceburg site and the Chatham site, because our ER depends upon all of the resources that have been taken away from Sydenham and put in Chatham so we continue to rely upon that.

“An ER physician needs to be able to admit a patient to the ICU in Chatham. They needs to be able to refer a patient to the specialists that are in Chatham. So there needs to be an ongoing healthy relationship and the other two boards actions are conducive to that, but we have always recognized that we are a small community hospital. We can not provide that breadth of services. If we cannot access the Chatham site, we need to develop a relationship with Sarnia so we can access their specialists and their health care services,” Parsons said.

Parsons said the SDB board knows they need those relationships in place.

“We are going to do whatever we can to maintain them,” he said.

“That’s what our doctors have told us and that is what we believe in.”