Southlake Regional Health Centre officials told the community there is a need to bring care closer to home during a community town hall Tuesday night.
More than 110 people attended the virtual event, the last town hall in a series hosted by Southlake to discuss a new strategic plan. The town hall focused on what the Newmarket hospital has heard from residents who attended any of six in-person meetings in the past couple of months, and laid out Southlake's direction.
One of the foremost challenges Southlake faces is working toward constructing a new hospital, which was on people’s minds throughout the consultation process. Southlake president and CEO Paul Woods said all the local governments are behind their efforts to get a new hospital and have their needs met.
“The policy environment, the political environment, the bureaucratic environment in Ontario is — I’ll use the term 'complex,'” he said. “They also need a vision and they need solutions, and one of the things that I’m fond of saying is the cavalry is not coming over the hill. They haven’t even left the barn yet … We need to give them a solution set, instead of being a victim and sitting here with our hands folded.”
Southlake is working on a new strategic plan after wrapping up a previous five-year one. It has previously held town halls in Newmarket and Aurora to hear what people wanted to see from the hospital in the future. Issues identified in the consultation included population growth, minimal provincial capital investment at Southlake, community care challenges, workforce challenges, the importance of continued technological investment and health system integration.
Southlake officials talked repeatedly about the need to bring care closer to home for more people.
“What we’ve heard from our communities is that people want a more distributed approach. They don’t want to come to Davis Drive as the only option,” strategy, analytics and communications vice-president Tyler Chalk said. “They want to have options closer to home, and they understand that by doing that, it is not only convenient for them, it also preserves acute care capacity for those on Davis Drive who need it most.”
The hospital plans to have four areas of focus for its strategic plan to guide the future: clinic excellence, qualify and safety, experience and new models of care.
The town hall featured a question-and-answer portion. One person asked about parking fees and whether Southlake could change them.
Chalk said it is one of the few ways hospitals can collect revenue and that all of the proceeds go to hospital work.
“It’s kind of a necessary evil in the hospital world,” he said.
Woods also fielded a question about how Southlake will address the workforce challenges in the sector.
“This is a classic zero-sum game where if we win and get more doctors and nurses, it means somebody else gets less,” he said. “What we’re trying to do is both think about it is the best way to get those people, to recruit them and retain them, is for it to be the best place to work. And that’s all about a culture of fairness, inclusion, equity, kindness.
"More of a longer-term play for us is, how do we make new models of care that are able to essentially multiply the force?" Woods added.
