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Docs to hold non-confidence vote on NHS
By Doug Draper, Staff
Regional
Oct 24, 2008
The Niagara Health System's doctors will gather at an "emergency meeting" this Monday to vote on a motion of non-confidence in NHS's administration over its controversial plans to restructure services at hospital sites across the region.

The doctors -- all members of NHS's Medical Staff Association representing more than 400 front-line physicians -- will also vote on a motion calling for a more central location in Niagara for a new hospital complex NHS plans to construct in west St. Catharines.

The motions are contained in a memo recently distributed to staff association members and obtained by Niagara This Week.

The two motions:

 

  • "The Medical Staff Association of the NHS has no confidence in the leadership of the NHS;"

     

  • "The Medical Staff Association calls for a change in the location of the new health-care complex because its role as a regional referral hospital require more central sitting."

    The second motion refers to a hospital complex the NHS, the organization created by the province eight years ago to manage all Niagara's hospital services (except for those delivered at the West Lincoln Memorial Hospital in Grimsby), plans to break ground for later this fall off Fourth Avenue in west St. Catharines.

    According to the latest versions of NHS plans, that west St. Catharines hospital will house regional cancer and cardiac centres, and a growing number of other services, including maternity, mental health, specialty care for children and addiction services for women, while many services at other sites will be downsized or eliminated.

    NHS board chair Betty-Lou Souter said the association's tabling of the motions "is disturbing and a cause for concern."

    Souter said the doctors have every right to vote on the motions, but she believes "there is a silent majority out there" of doctors and other medical staff working for the NHS that support its restructuring plans, currently under review by a Hamilton-based Local Health Integration Network and the province.

    Niagara Falls surgeon Chris Offierski, a former chief surgeon and board member for the NHS, said he's "confident the motions will carry."

    Offierski added that concern over the NHS's plans is being expressed by a majority of the doctors in Niagara Falls, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Welland, Fort Erie and Port Colborne, and "together these doctors provide patient care to most of the patients in the Niagara region."

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