Typical Conservative Screw-Up!

So another screw up for the Ontario Tories. It seems that Deputy PC leader Christine Elliott,  and Nepean-Carleton MPP Lisa MacLeod went to a local hospital to slam the Liberals for cutting services and closing the emergency room when in fact services have not been cut and the emergency room remains open..


Here' the article from the local newspaper....

OTTAWA — The Ontario Progressive Conservative party brought two top guns to Winchester on Friday to slam a government-mandated emergency room cut at the hospital — even though neither the hospital nor the regional health agency has made any such plan.

As a dozen residents in that Tory stronghold looked on, deputy PC leader Christine Elliott and Nepean-Carleton MPP Lisa MacLeod ripped into the Champlain Local Health Integration Network (Eastern Ontario’s health authority) and the Liberal government, accusing them of putting the Winchester hospital’s ER “on the chopping block.” They blamed Premier Dalton McGuinty for the cuts, and warned the Tories would not tolerate cuts to rural health care.

“By cutting ER service, even in the evenings, rural residents in Eastern Ontario will be deprived of key services and cause them to travel further and wait longer to see a doctor or get other medical procedures,” said Elliott, who is also the opposition health critic. “The possible closure of the evening ER in Winchester is the human cost of Dalton McGuinty’s poor planning.”

MacLeod, whose riding includes the area just north of Winchester, agreed, promising a fight.

“I want to assure my constituents I will defend them and that I will fight to keep the ER open,” she added. “I will put pressure on the Champlain LHIN to prove that they are looking at protecting rural health services or they are going to have to deal with me for the next nine months.”

But the problem with all the fighting talk was that, there is really nothing to fight. The Tories apparently read too much into an online survey asking for residents’ views on services provided by the hospital and saw cuts where none exist. Both the hospital and the Champlain health agency deny they have any plan to cut the Winchester hospital’s emergency-room hours, and when pressed, the two MPPs could not provide evidence of any such decision. Indeed, there was a hint of the absurd at the news conference when Winchester hospital board vice-chair Lisa Little, standing next to MacLeod, rebuffed the MPP when she insisted the hospital and the LHIN are contemplating cuts.

“There was never a plan to close the emergency department. There was no intention to close,” Little maintained.

She explained that in response to a vision document put forward by the Champlain health authority that hospitals that served fewer than 100,000 people might be turned into polyclinics, facilities that offer a wide range of hospital-type services but without the capacity for major surgeries, the Winchester hospital started a discussion on future service delivery as part of its five-year strategic plan.

It launched an online survey on various services the hospital provides, listing options for changes to see which ones residents would prefer if they had to choose.

Little said the hospital wanted to hear from the community and indeed, one option among many was reducing emergency room service at night; another was merging the hospital with another. The survey also asked what services people consider critical to keep in Winchester and which ones they would be willing to receive in other hospitals.

“We were talking about external challenges that the hospital — and all Ontario hospitals — face in the future, and what options and directions we wanted to take forward,” Little said. “We were putting all options out there to say ‘the LHIN has expressed a vision but what do we want for our community?”

Alex Munter, the new Champlain LHIN chief executive, said he couldn’t understand how anyone would say that a hospital the LHIN considers a model, one of the best of its size, could be subject to such cuts. Munter said the Winchester hospital’s operating budget has gone up 25 per cent in the last three years, and undergone a $45-million facelift, including improvements in the emergency department. And now the LHIN is actually considering adding a social-services building to the hospital, to create a campus atmosphere.

“The budget is increasing, the hospital is expanding, it is the most high-tech small hospital in Eastern Ontario. Why would you close the ER?” Munter said. “We have no plan for them to close the ER, we have no plan to convert that hospital into a polyclinic.”

In a feverish election year in which politicians of all stripes are jockeying for attention and trying to get an edge, the rhetoric has often not matched the facts. The Liberals, for instance, have accused the PCs of planning a two-per-cent cut in the HST, with deadly consequences for health care and education, even though the Tories are yet to release an election platform. In their eagerness to slam their opponents, the Tories may have taken a survey on a strategic plan and turned into an ER closing that never was.