Merge forces: Let's build on the strength of all area hospitals, not demolish one Final Edition

• Published in: Kitchener-Waterloo record
• Main Author: Dr. Ronald F. Pace
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kitchener, Ont Torstar Syndication Services, a Division of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited 13.11.1996

One wonders where the DHC comes up with its projections for future health care needs. It says we need 67 family physicians, six neurosurgeons and 27 psychiatrists. It certainly needs a healthy dose of reality to realize that these projections are as ludicrous as the belief that the need to close St. Mary's Hospital is not politically driven and that the DHC is an unbiased panel of experts. It sounds like there's a feeding frenzy going on where bits of the St. Mary's Hospital carcass are being traded off to build undeserved empires elsewhere. It sure sounds as if Cambridge Memorial Hospital and Kitchener-Waterloo hospital will be the winners in this arrangement, which of course is why they are all for the closure of St. Mary's. Unfortunately all this has been been made easier by St. Mary's administrators being offered to keep their jobs by taking over Freeport Hospital as the reward for allowing all this to happen without putting up a fight. St. Mary's has proven to be an efficiently run hospital which provides excellent adult patient care and where most of the major non-gynecologic surgery is performed in the city. K-W hospital has one of the country's largest obstetrical units associated with an excellent neonatal and pediatric unit (a fact apparently unknown to Veronica Kerr, the head of the DHC). Freeport Hospital has shown its capacity to care for long-term disabled and palliative care patients.