One Hospital or Two

By Faith Codee Woltz

The first of two public sessions was held by the hospital studies committee Oct. 24 at the Essex County Civic Centre.

The meeting was held for the general public to express their opinions in having Hotel-Dieu Grace and Windsor Regional Hospital combined in a new building. The three-member task force of MPP of Windsor West Teresa Piruzza, Dave Cooke and Tom Porter were there to answer questions and hear feedback from Essex county residences.

The executive director of Community Living Essex County Nancy Wallace-Gero attended the session to gain answers for herself personally as well as professionally for the individuals supported through Community Living Essex County.

“I wanted to come and make sure I’m fully informed about what’s happening and to take a look at what is going on from the eyes of the people that we support and their families and also as a county resident personally,” said Wallace-Gero. “I’m very concerned that whatever is developed is taking into consideration this entire community and not just focused on Windsor.”

The co-chairs of the Windsor Hospitals study have been meeting with committees, the hospital boards and the public since April to see if the future of Windsor’s community would be better served with the continual development of the two separate hospitals or a new single site acute care hospital.

Co-chair Tom Porter said it is important to involve the public in this decision because it is all for them.

“It really is all about the public… the delivery of health care is to the community,” said Porter.  “So it is very important, and tonight is especially, being out in Essex because right now people in the county, many of them, come into downtown Windsor for example and go to Hotel Dieu-Grace hospital or some of them end up at Windsor Regional Hospital. The location of the hospital is very important to people.”

The plans for this hospital would affect Hotel Dieu-Grace and Windsor Regional hospitals acute care facilities. Windsor Regional’s Tayfour campus would be unaffected by the new hospital as it is geared towards rehabilitation and non-emergency services.

“The common trend at all of the meetings is the importance of community involvement,” said Teresa Piruzza.

“We’re really identifying what our concerns are at the front end,” said Piruzza. “It’s not after the fact, and that’s often what happens is a decision is made, that hospital is going to be built in an area sometimes some of these initial kinds of discussions don’t occur until afterwards which causes problems down the line. So we really want to make sure we get it right, that we identify our concerns, all the issues and make sure that we work together.”