By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON. April 26, 2013. There probably isn’t a week of the year when we aren’t celebrating something. Every cause there is wants its fifteen minutes of fame and the doctors we rely upon to keep us healthy are no different from the Association for Unwed Mothers or the Society to Preserve the real Conservative Party in Canada.
The Region’s Physician Recruitment Initiative has asked the media to take part in the 10th annual Halton Physician Appreciation Week
Events are to be held at each of the hospitals in the Region with the Mayor of each municipality leading the parade.
Oakville in the Physician’s Lounge Monday April 29 – lunch at noon. Nice touch – offer a meal and it’s surprising how many media show up – an Open Bar and you’ll have everyone who was ever given a pencil showing up. Oakville has a really strong story to tell and with a new location under construction there isn’t going to be much negative news during that get together.
An architectural rendering of the Joseph Brant Hospital re-build. Management opted for a re-branding of the hospital for a new corporate look. when the hospital is complete it will change the way the city sees and uses Lakeshore Road; in the meantime 25% of the existing space can’t be used because the hospital says the government hasn’t given them the dollars they need,
Milton gets it call onto the stage Friday May 3 – 7:30 a.m. in the Physician’s Lounge. They too have a story to tell with the plans for a significant addition underway. Good news there.
Georgetown will do their thing on Wednesday May 1 – 7:30 a.m. in the Boardroom of the Georgetown Hospital.
Do you see where this is going?
A more direct view of the re-built hospital based on an architects rendering. The parking lot on the left, which will have the Family Medical Clinic on the ground floor will be the first part of a much larger plan,
Not a word about the opportunity to show our appreciation for the doctors at Joseph Brant Hospital. How come?
Well you see – they are in the middle of a $300,000 re-branding exercise and they are struggling with the need to cut back – by as much as 25% – on the service they offer the public. There are billboards, newspaper ads and all kinds of media presentations – but they aren’t ready yet to make themselves available for questions.
The hospital is still smarting over the $9 million C Difficile insurance settlement that was agreed upon and they are working through the painful process of arriving at an amicable relationship with the city of Burlington who is in the process of plucking $60 million from their taxpayers pockets to pay for half of the $120 million the public has to come up with for the very significant re-build the hospital is in the process of embarking upon.
One would have hoped, and the community deserved, a public apology on the C Difficile settlement. That matter was closed by having the insurance company write cheques. The problem was at and with the hospital at the time and while there is a new management team in place – thy can’t just sweep this under a rug.
The first part of the re-build at Joseph Brant is a building for the Family Medical Clinic that will be an extension of the McMaster University medical operation that will be on the ground floor of the structure – with two floors of parking on top of the medical offices. Parking has become the grandest of cash grabs for hospitals and this building is being designed to take on an additional two floors of parking.
This is what the Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital “campus” is going to look like when all the construction is completed in 2017-18 The front entrance will be oriented to the lake. That red circle on the lower right, near the number 4 will become the new entrance. There will be several entrances to the hospital. The emergency entrance will remain where it is. The Family Medicine clinic and the parking garage are at the bottom # 2 There will be a roadway through the “campus” – that’s where the number 8′s are.
The hospital in Burlington doesn’t seem prepared to let any media crawl through the place asking all kinds of embarrassing questions. So much for appreciating the crowd over there – and so much for the physician recruitment program the Region has in place. Oakville is going to get the best and the brightest.
Old Joe Brant must be wondering what they are doing to the land over on Lakeshore Road he was given by the British. Fortunately there is still that Brant Trust.
