This requires your immediate attention! SOS wants every available person to attend the LHIN Consultation meeting on Saturday, May 9th at WDSS for the 10:00 am session. All SDH Supporters: This is an important meeting! We need your help again. Your SOS Committee, the community, SDH users and employees, the CKHA, our MPPs Maria Van Bommel and Pat Hoy are all in agreement and united on two very key issues: 1. We all agree with the request by the CKHA for a five year reprieve for the SDH ED so that all of us can work together to make SDH and the ED a shining example of what rural health care can be in this province; and, 2. With the announcement by the government that a Northern and Rural Health Care Panel is going to be put in place to look at health care issues then obviously there must be a moratorium on all cuts, changes, closures until this panel does the work it needs to do. Otherwise what is the point of the panel? So what has been the response of the LHIN to all of this? They said they need more time to consider the issue and in the mean time they continue along with a flawed consultation process, eating up more of your hard earned tax dollars, plus they continue to show a statistical comparison between rural SDH and the urban hospital in Chatham. A comparison no one with any health care knowledge agrees with. If you want to evaluate SDH then compare it to peer hospitals across Ontario. What do they continue to mislead the public? What are they afraid of? If you have attended the SDH public meetings in the past – thank you – we need you here again. If you have yet to attend one this is the one we need you at. Our message to the LHIN is straight forward: 1. Accept the request of the CKHA (which everyone else also supports) and give the SDH ED a five year reprieve so that we can all work together; 2. Stop wasting our tax dollars on ineffective and poorly thought out “consultation meetings” ; and, 3. Quit misleading the public with skewed statistical information. Am I upset – yes. This is now at the point where this entire exercise is an utter waste of your hard earned tax dollars – it needs to stop. Will I be there on Sat May 9th at 10:00 am at WDSS – absolutely. Please be there. We need your support! Please bring your signs, your passion and your friends! Thank you (again) Jeff Wesley |