BURK’S FALLS – If Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare (MAHC) believes the battle over the Burk’s Falls and District Health Centre (BFDHC) is over after the beds closed as of last December, it is mistaken.
The local committee to save the health centre agreed unanimously on Monday night to challenge the hospital board’s plans to pour more than $150,000 of monies donated to the now closed hospital into renovations for private physician offices.
“As far as I’m concerned that money wasn’t donated to dismantle the hospital,” was one resident’s opinion that resonated throughout the Burk’s Falls legion hall.
Another resident said that after his mother passed away, the family donated money in her memory to the place where she received much of her care.
“We donated our money in the hopes that they would buy a couple of new beds or whatever they needed,” said another man. “I phoned my brother in Sudbury and he said why are they using they using our money on something that is only going to benefit a small proportion of the population and help them take our hospital away.”
The only voice of dissent against the proposal to attempt to block MAHC from using the money for the Burk’s Falls Family Health Team offices came from Ryerson Reeve Glenn Miller who pondered the consequences of such a move.
“I think it is a Catch 22 situation where we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t,” said Miller. He said he believes there is a chance that if the renovations don’t happen the doctors may move out of the BFDHC, lessening demand for the few remaining service providers, and those would be stripped as well.
The MAHC board decided last year to close all seven hospital beds at the BFDHC and discontinue the daytime urgent care clinic (UCC). The beds were officially closed on December 1 and the UCC closed last July. As well as the BFDHC, MAHC operates the hospitals in Bracebridge and Huntsville.
At the meeting was Ontario Health Coalition executive director Natalie Mehra who supported the group’s agreement to fight the use of the donation money.
“I wonder if it is legal to take the monies donated for a hospital and use it for something else,” said Mehra. “Those renovations will dismantle the hospital space.”
She later added, “Once they renovate it so the rooms can’t take beds anymore, how would you ever get the money to let you put back what you had before?”
Mehra told the crowd that she has been in touch with a lawyer who has agreed to look at the case as well as the ownership of the BFDHC building.
Miller says that neither the local municipalities nor MAHC can find a signed copy of any agreement turning ownership of the building over to MAHC.
He said the last signed agreement that’s been uncovered dates back to 1984 when the Red Cross divested itself of the hospital, which said if the building were no longer being used as a hospital, ownership would be returned to the local hospital. He says an unsigned agreement from 1997 doesn’t have a similar clause and that former reeves have told him that’s why it is unsigned.
Mehra also told the crowd that her group is working at lobbying the government to have public consultations with the Rural and Northern Healthcare Task Force that is currently working on a report asked for by Premier Dalton McGuinty. Mehra said the task force is currently not planning on meeting with any groups outside of the doctor, nursing and hospital lobbyists.
“It’s almost unheard of as a way of developing policy,” said Mehra.
Mehra said she’s working at putting together her own task force on the subject that will include former politicians, physicians and health professionals that will host public meetings throughout the province.
“I thought this must come to Burk’s Falls because this is the first complete shut down in the province,” said Mehra. She said she is hoping for a spring meeting.