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TORONTO - The Ontario Public Service Employees Union is
demanding the minister of health maintain a popular project to conduct community
medical testing in 10 rural hospital labs -- and get to the bottom of who made
the controversial decision to axe it.
“All we have had is denials,” said Warren (Smokey) Thomas,
president of the 130,000-member public service union. “The project didn’t
terminate itself. This is such an obviously bad decision that everyone is
running from taking responsibility for.”
The mystery deepened late last week when Health Minister David
Caplan denied in the legislature that the government was cutting funding for the
projects, directly contradicting Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare CEO Barry
Lockhart, who said at two public forums that he had to end the hospital’s
participation after the government withdrew $900,000 in funding.
Caplan also said the decision was made through the Local Health
Integration Network, something the North Simcoe Muskoka LHIN denied in a letter
to the OPSEU. In a Sept 8 letter from Ruben Rosen, Chair of the North Simcoe
Muskoka LHIN, he stated “the decision to move to the provincial model for
providing community lab services, following the termination of the pilot
project, was made by Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare.”
Muskoka Algonquin originally argued in the spring to maintain
local community testing at the hospital, claiming it had many advantages to
patients, physicians and the hospital.
These advantages were confirmed in a report by RPO Consultants,
released in May.
RPO stated that the average costs of a patient’s tests were $33
at the private labs compared to $22 when done locally by community hospital
labs.
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