Nothing. Zilch. Nada.

The Provincial Government has released its 10 year capital forecast for infrastructure projects (for things like HOSPITALS, GO Transit etc.) and despite the efforts of thousands of Miltonians, Halton Healthcare Services and countless numbers of pleas, there is nothing in this report regarding a green light for the expansion of Milton District Hospital.

The link is here if you’d like to skim through it.

It provides few details of hospitals that “COULD” receive funding over the next few years based on the ability of the government to pay for it.  Can you say “election promises”?  Here’s how its worded…”Completing the 27 major hospital projects under construction, and continuing to invest in hospital expansions and redevelopment projects, subject to fiscal capacity.” AND “Investing in three to five major hospital expansions and redevelopment projects each year, subject to fiscal capacity.” (page v of the report)

Through all the discussions in the last year or so regarding hospital levy’s and how they were supposed to help us get where we need to go, rally’s and reasons to go and not to go and those of us (me mostly) to “play nice” when it comes to putting pressure on the provincial government to open their eyes and “get off their duff” and do something about it….all of that didnt work.

Council was sold on the hospital levy that it will help. It didnt. That idea failed. Period. Full stop.

“Be nice” Mike…I was told. “Dont rock the boat.” I complied.

All of that proved to be unsuccessful in the grand scheme of things as Ive gone through that report and found NOTHING regarding Milton’s hospital.

Its provincial election time. And my gloves are off. Im hoping that those who said theyll be in line to drive the bus to Queens Park and protest hold true to their promises because now is the time to rattle some cages.

Its gone beyond silly side remarks to the premier when he drops into town for at Tweetup. I got him to say “Milton Hospital Expansion” which was cute and all, but does nothing when it comes to the big picture.

The level of frustration that I and thousands of Miltonians are feeling right now is beyond words. Im tired of tip-toeing around things and I hope the other community leaders feel the same way. It seems the way things “should be done” dont work.

I want everyone, regardless of party youll be supporting in the next election, PC, Liberal, NDP, GREEN, RHINO, Pancake…whatever it is. If you have a sign on your lawn, make sure you have a GROW MILTON HOSPITAL to go along with it

The GROW MILTON HOSPITAL campaign, despite others saying it was “political” simply wasnt. It wasnt meant to promote any particular party and it again wont be. It simply has to be said to any candidate, Ted, Indira, (cant remember the name of the NDP if theres one) or anyone else that walks through this riding that the hospital needs to be greenlighted and NOW. If any of the party leaders fly through town for photo ops they will be met with ME and hopefully a few others with GROW MILTON HOSPTIAL signs and demands of a FIRM date for green lighting the expansion. Nothing else will be accepted.

With this delay, it puts us even MORE behind the 8 ball when it comes to the delivery of health care services in this town. We need a made in Milton solution for our hospital as others that are being built in the surrounding areas ARENT designed for growth in other regions.

Evidence has been presented forever and a day with the need for growth at MDH and its been ignored. Thanks but no thanks.

We’ve had senior members of the provincial govt through town from the infrastructure minister, to the health minister to the premier and MUMS the word. They knew nothing was going to be done. Any mention of the hospital expansion and either theyre whisked away to question period or they blurt out lines like “er….uh….we’re looking at it” Whatever.

Sorry that Im venting but reading through this report and thinking back to all the comments I got from others saying “be nice…it’ll happen…this will help …dont you worry.” Well, we now see where that got us.

ZILCH.

Continuing on the “hospital” theme of my posts today, I read this article from Oakville Today and a conversation with John Oliver, the CEO of Halton Healthcare Services.  You will find his name familiar as HHS is also responsible for Milton District Hospital.  This article gives a good synopsis on what it took to get the new hospital approved in Oakville, the services it will be providing area residents (potentially Miltonians as well) and when we can expect it to be up and running.

I think the big difference between the new Oakville Hospital and the potential expansion of Milton District Hospital is the fact that Oakville is, as John Oliver states, “from scratch” whereas any plans for MDH will include the current facility and the surrounding lands.  There is no idea from any organization on what the potential costs of expansion would be, including the all important local portion that the Town of Milton has to raise in that 30 year period.

Depending on what the provincial government approves this coming 2011 fiscal year (or if they will approve Milton’s expansion) will decide on how much the Town of Milton will have to raise.  As you know, Milton Town Council had approved the 1% tax levy to go towards the dedicated Hospital Expansion fund for the 2011 tax year and will be looking at other ways to add funds to the balance.

It’s important for everyone to keep their eye on the ball so to speak on what needs to be done, ensure we have a proper plan in place and for Milton Town Council, in conjunction with the residents and taxpayers of Milton, find ways to raise money for this fund without continuing and or increasing this levy.  Many of the councillors around the table stated that they will be ensuring more public input on ideas and I will endeavour to make sure that happens.

Obviously this new hospital in Oakville will have some affect on what expansion MDH will get but I hope the province of Ontario realizes that something has to be done.  Its been said over and over again and it bears repeating over and over again.  The Province of Ontario needs to recognize that Milton needs SOMETHING done and soon.  The population of Milton is rapidly approaching 100,000 and our current facilities simply wont do.  The Town of Milton needs to be seen as a priority to ensure the proper delivery of healthcare services to Milton residents and the surrounding area.

Lets hope they listen…because I certainly will keep talking about it with you.

Feel free to comment.

Halton Healthcare Services President John Oliver brings community up to speed on new North Oakville hospital project

NORTH OAKVILLE TODAY – A consortium will soon be selected to build the new Oakville hospital and shovels are likely to hit the ground by the summer, but curiosity still surrounds the finer points of the ongoing process.

North Oakville Today spoke with President and CEO of Halton Healthcare Services (HHS) John Oliver to get further insight into one of the most important projects ever undertaken by this community.

The new Oakville hospital, which is slated for a 50-acre site at the northwest corner of Third Line and Dundas Street, is expected to open its doors in early 2015.

“We’re building a hospital from scratch,” said Oliver. “We’re not doing a renovation, we’re not doing an add-on. We’re on a green field site and we have an opportunity to create a facility that in all aspects is modern and designed with the most recent thinking in hospital design.”

The project is being funded through the province’s Alternative Financing and Procurement (AFP) model.

Under the model, a private consortium of companies and investors will be responsible for the design, construction, financing and maintenance of the hospital.

The hospital is then paid for by the province and stakeholders over a 30-year period, similar to a mortgage.

According to Oliver, the AFP model transfers much of the construction risk to private sector partners.

The AFP model requires a local share contribution towards the cost of the hospital, which totals $530 million: $60 million from the Oakville Hospital Capital Campaign, $270 from Halton Healthcare Services and up to $200 million from the Town of Oakville.

In order to protect the competitive bidding process, an estimated total cost of the hospital has never been released.

With the February 25 request for proposal approval date fast approaching, Oliver said that the foremost factor being considered when selecting one of three bidding consortia is how closely the bids adhere to HHS’s building specifications.

“We have issued what are called project specific output specs,” said Oliver. “We are looking for the bids to be compliant and aligned with our desired project descriptors.”

Oliver said that cost issues are also being considered as well as construction management and building maintenance.

“We will have an agreement where for 30 years after we take occupancy, the building will be maintained [by the consortium],” he said.

According to Oliver, after the request for proposal close date, there will be a period of bid evaluations with Infrastructure Ontario ending in mid to late May. Only after that will the successful bidder be announced.

“Soon after the preferred proponent is named, we’ll probably begin early work on the site,” said Oliver. “There are things that have to get going with access roads and storm water management and all the grading and the developments needed to have the infrastructure to sustain a major capital project. There’ll be site work likely in late May, early June.”

Oliver said that at the same time the preliminary site work is taking place, HHS should be working towards commercial and financial close, which involves coming to a final agreement with the approved consortium. He said commercial and financial close is expected by mid-summer.

“Then the actual site construction work can begin immediately after that so we would anticipate that to be in late July or early August,” he said.

When the facility opens, patients will be transferred to the new Oakville hospital from Oakville-Trafalgar Memorial Hospital. The number of beds at the new hospital will be increased over time to 457 beds with space to grow to 602 beds in the future.

Oliver said right now, HHS is working on being operational ready for 2015.

“It’s a mountain and you scale a mountain one day at a time,” he said, “and we’re starting four and a half years in advance and we will be very ready to deliver care when we open those doors.”

The transition into a new hospital seems like a daunting task but Oliver said that HHS is looking into other hospitals that have successfully made the move.

“Any lessons we can learn on being operational ready we are picking up from some very recent experiences locally,” he said.

Oliver said that the vision for the new Oakville hospital is meant to offer more than just additional rooms, newer equipment and more staff. It will also offer a comfortable environment in which to heal.

“There is a lot of evidence,” said Oliver, “that environments that are warm, supportive, that are reflective of the environment that you live in…are conducive to healing and much more supportive for families and for staff that are staying with patients as well. So that’s the kind of environment we’re after.

“Almost all areas are designed now to make sure that we have light wells and areas where people can feel connected to the landscape and connected to nature through the building.”

Oliver said that HHS will be more ouspoken once the request for proposal analysis is completed in May. When the final design is approvedshortly there after, Oakville will get its first glimpse into what the new hospital will actually look like when the doors open in 2015.

“This is a much-needed project for Oakville,” he said. “It’s a very exciting.”

 For information about the new Oakville hospital, visit www.newoakvillehosptial.com. 

35,000 people in Milton had their say.  They want the governments at all levels to make the expansion of Milton’s Hospital a priority…and NOW!  The only question that remains is will David Caplan, Minister of Health and George Smitherman, Minister of Infrastructure listen???  Only time will tell.

A volunteer group dedicated to securing provincial approval and funding for an expanded Milton District Hospital says it has collected signatures from close to 35,000 people on postcards addressed to Ontario’s Minister of Health.

“The incredible enthusiasm in this community is amazing,” said Pete Pomeroy, co-chair of the Friends of Milton Hospital, which started its postcard signing blitz about two months ago assisted by $25,000 in funding from the Town of Milton.

The group is now hoping to deliver the postcards personally to the Minister of Health, David Caplan, and it also wants to meet with the Minister of Infrastructure, George Smitherman. The two ministries are expected to make final decisions on which of 58 proposed hospital capital projects will get put onto an updated 10-year infrastructure plan, expected to be released this fall.

“We need a hospital (expansion), we need a place to go that ourselves and our family feel we’re going to get the care that we need, they (the hospital) have the specialties that we need, that we can have faith in our hospital,” said Cari Kovachik-MacNeil, co-chair along with Pomeroy.

The duo met last Wednesday to present their case to Dr. Sacha Bhatia, healthy policy advisor to Ontario Premier Dalton McGunity.

Bhatia listened to the group’s concerns but advised them they should be working with officials from the ministries of health and infrastructure and the Mississauga-Halton Local Health Integration Network (LHIN), said Karman Wong, a spokesperson from the Premier’s Office. LHINs are responsible for planning, funding and integrating health care services locally.

“At the end of the day, decisions on which hospitals should get funding shouldn’t be political,” said Wong. “They should be based on where the need is.”

The criteria for assessing that need is what concerns Pomeroy and Kovachik-MacNeil. They said at least one criterion the Province will be using is wait time statistics for hospital emergency rooms (ER).

In this respect, statistics show Milton District Hospital fares better than most hospitals. For the first quarter of this year, the average wait time for a serious condition at the hospital ER was just under five hours, a couple hours better than the provincial average and about half the time spent by patients at hospitals in Burlington and Mississauga.

“Having said that, health care is more than emergency (service),” argued Kovachik-MacNeil. She said patients from Milton should not be forced to go to other hospitals for specialized services.

Pomeroy added many people believe HHS’s new Oakville-Trafalgar Memorial Hospital, expected to begin construction over the next couple years, will be a regional hospital built to accommodate the needs of Miltonians.

“But it isn’t true, that isn’t the case,” said Pomeroy.

While the Friends of Milton Hospital’s postcard campaign has wrapped up, a similar petition for a Milton hospital expansion is still being circulated.

Led by former director of development with the Milton District Hospital Foundation, Donna McLaughlin, the Milton Hospital Action Committee said in April it wanted to collect 50,000 signatures on a petition to be presented to the provincial legislature by Halton MPP Ted Chudleigh on June 6.

“It (the petition) was about 8,000 (signatures) at the end of June and we decided to hold it for the summer,” said Chudleigh. “They’re still collecting signatures and I’m going to present it in the House in September.”

Tim Foran can be reached at tforan@miltoncanadianchampion.com

The buzz in the City of Toronto is that Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman is contemplating a run at the City’s top job. In a recent speech at the Toronto Board of Trade, many people who were there and heard the speech feel hes either testing the waters for a mayoral run or has already decided he will.

Also, in a recent interview on CFRB Toronto Councillor Rob Ford spoke with Leslie Roberts saying that once he settles his “personal issues” he will definitely be running against Mayor David Miller. In a survey of CFRB callers before Rob Ford came on, there was strong support for Rob to run.

You can tell things are getting antsy in the City of Toronto when more than 2 years before the next municipal election you are seeing high profile candidates preparing for a run at the top job.

I know the City of Toronto is a bigger place with a lot more on the line as it seems than lets say the Town of Milton. But what would your reaction be if one of the sitting councillors here said, “Oh ya, Im going to run for Mayor of Milton.” Thats 2 years away. I think theres a few issues that need some immediate attention other than ones political career…especially in Toronto.

To be honest I think Mr Smitherman should be working on his governments promises of reducing wait times in our emergency rooms and improving our health care system. And not just in the City of Toronto. The province is grossly understaffed in doctors and nurses and the ones we have now are being stretched to the limit. In the coming years, Ontario will see more doctors and nurses retire than anytime in history, while the number of people entering the field wont be enough to cover the short fall. This means family doctors will be harder to find, emergency rooms will be like madhouses, people wont have places to go to get regular checkups, families that have children with autism will continue to lag on the waiting lists for much needed funding and too many more issues to mention here.

Many people who frequent Milton hospital are running into some issues. Milton’s population is now over 70,000 and in a short time will be getting close to 100,000. One major thing thats been ignored over these years? The roads? Yes. But just as important if not MORE important…The hospital.

And to be clear, people have to realize (before the start blaming the town, which is a sport it seems here) that funding for the hospital comes from the province. There are some drastic needs that our hospital faces in the coming years. It needs to expand…now.

The same kind of problems was faced in Brampton. For years, Peel Memorial (then called William Osler Health Centre) was the only hospital in town. One hospital for almost 400,000 people. It only took about 10-15 years to get another health care facility opened in Brampton and recently Peel Memorial has closed down, creating a huge vacuum of need there.

Milton Hospital, if not addressed soon…can be headed the same way. Recent estimations of Milton’s future population growth see it reaching 170,000 and maybe even more in the next 20 years. We could be facing the same issues Brampton has if we dont do something about it now. This province needs a full time health care minister and not a part time mayoral candidate. With this speech and others like it to come, Smitherman will be dogged by the media to find out when hes going to be running, if hes going to be running, what will his platform be, etc all the while the hospitals go unchecked.

On the other hand, the hospital is making the improvements it can, especially with the CT scanner and the fund raising involved in it. Through the generosity of many Milton residents and businesses, Milton hospital now has the CT scanner up and running.

The importance of this issue just isnt prevalent in adults and corporations. Recently a friend of my son Anthony had a birthday party and included in his invitation was a request. In lieu of presents he would like the guests to his party to make a donation to the CT scanner in Milton hospital. Through a small group of kids, they raised $250 and he personally delivered it to the hospital.

Too bad it seems that the provincial government doesnt show the same concern to our hospital as does this 8 year old and his friends. Smitherman has time after time made claims that they are fixing the problems in our hospitals, all the while people are stuck in the waiting room looking for care.

I know in some cases, there are people who really shouldnt be in our emergency rooms and going to either a walk in clinic or their family doctor would be more productive and less of a strain on our emergency room staff. There are legitimate cases where care is needed NOW, but they are forced to either wait, suffer or try to find another hospital that can take them.

The fact that Smitherman, a full 31 months before the next election, is “shaking the bushes” shows his concerns lie somewhere else and not in Ontario’s health care system. If being Mayor George is important to him, maybe he should call Dalton and ask that he be replaced in the health care file so that someone who isnt worrying about his next political step can take charge and make real changes to hospitals and health care in our province.

Step aside George.