In the seven months he has been at the helm for the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance, the hospital’s provincially-appointed supervisor Rob Devitt says a “wholesale transformation” in leadership has taken place.
Devitt also reiterated on Wednesday, during an update to the media, that all plans moving forward include a two-campus and two-emergency department model, with facilities and ER’s remaining in Wallaceburg and in Chatham.
“As someone that has been in healthcare leadership for over 30 years, I can’t think of a time or an organization where there has been that wholesale transformation in leadership,” Devitt said.
“I think that is both great and it is a little scary. When you have new people, we’re learning as we go. On the up side, I think we have an incredible set of leaders.”
The entire senior leadership team at the CKHA has been re-shaped in recent months, along with the medical leadership team as well.
Devitt said engagement, both internally and in the community, and transparency is going to be a priority for the leadership of the organization.
Part of this engagement starts on Thursday night at the CBD Club in Wallaceburg, where the first in a series of open house will take place at the CBD Club from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
“It’s a drop-in type format,” Devitt said.
“That has been done very deliberately because we think it is important that as many citizens as possible have a chance to talk to different leaders because they are all new. We’ve deliberately steered away from the old-school format of one person at the front talking for hours with PowerPoint., and then two or three people who happen to wrestle their way to the mic getting airtime with questions and everyone else having no chance. This has been setup so we can hear everybody.”
Devitt said more sessions are planned and more will be scheduled in the future as well.
Newly hired President and CEO Lori Marshall is kicking off a detailed planning process to figure out how the CKHA can redevelop their two campuses, Devitt said.
“This is a two campus organization, it’s not a one campus organization,” Devitt said.
“We’ve been clear on that through a number of these (meetings with the media.) One of Lori’s jobs will be to come up with long-range plans to do reasonably affordable sized projects to keep this campus vibrant and the campus in Wallaceburg vibrant.”
Devitt said the first reinvestment for the CKHA was announced on Tuesday, regarding Respiratory Therapy at the Sydenham Campus.
“That is particularly designed to focus on strengthening and supporting the emergency department,” he said.
This specific reinvestment at the Wallaceburg site was brought up by a doctor working at the Sydenham Campus.
“One of the doctors in Wallaceburg had raised that need with us,” Devitt said.
“That physician and some of our leaders worked together on crafting a business case. In a hospital like this, as I would suspect any large public institution, decisions have to be made based on documents that analyze what are the costs, what are the benefits, how would you implement it, what is it going to mean, that way you can measure whether you were successful or not.”
Devitt added that an external review was conducted to analyze how the CKHA can further strengthen the relationship between the ER’s in Wallaceburg and Chatham.
While the final report is not complete, Devitt said an oral report by the reviewer stated that Respiratory Therapy was a priority.
“We fed that into the process and that culminated into yesterday’s announcement,” Devitt said.
“I think that is great news in supporting the Wallaceburg ER. There will be more announcements coming in the coming weeks, but we need to be patient. We are very deliberate, very methodical and very analytic in how we do things because we don’t want to get it wrong.”
Devitt added: “I know sometimes when organizations are changing people want there to be like a revolution, but in health care revolutions often mean corners are cut, things are missed and we’re not the kind of organization where you want to miss stuff and make a mistake. We’re talking about people’s safety and people’s lives and people’s on-going good health. So we’re very excited about that and this is the first in what hope to be a series of announcements as we start to readjust things.”
Details about an internal controls audit were also released on Wednesday.
Read about that story here: Gaps and opportunities revealed in CKHA audit
– Photo credit: Aaron Hall
