By Kevin Woodhouse
www.thesuburban.com
“Like many other people, I was surprised to hear about Danielle McCann’s departure,” MNA Geoffrey Kelley said about the recent departure of McCann as ceo of Montreal’s region health care authority with two years left on her mandate and the subsequent hiring of Patricia Gauthier.
Kelley told The Suburban that working with McCann in the past was “always productive as she was trying to improve health care services across the island and was paying attention to the needs of West Island residents.”
Kelley did not speculate on McCann’s departure but did have an opinion on the recent decision to repatriate patients so that the new McGill University Hospital Centre (MUHC) hospital would be “for highly specialized services and if the health authority wants to have people go to community hospitals that are closer to them, that principal is sound but the Lakeshore General Hospital (LGH) is overtaxed at the present time,” the Jacques-Cartier MNA said.
“While it would be better for patients in the West Island to seek radiation or dialysis treatments in their own backyard, how will the LGH deliver these services without additional resources?” Kelley asked.
Kelley believes that if the Parti québécois (PQ) government want patients to seek help in community hospitals than those hospitals need additional resources to handle the extra patients, especially since patients come from Lachine all the way to the Ontario border for treatment at the LGH.
“We have to smoke the PQ out on this issue as there already alarm bells going off about the current government’s management of health care,” said Kelley.
Kelley also wonders how patients who are turned away from the MUHC to get service at community hospitals “will be able to get them at LGH when some of those services either aren’t available or there is currently lengthy wait time. Without extra resources, waiting times and waiting list will only get longer.”
Because of Gauthier taking over as director general, ASSS Montreal cancelled, for a third time, a scheduled interview with The Suburban last week. The West Island HSSS have been unable to provide any information on the upcoming repatriation, slated for April 1, a mere six weeks from now.
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