Rural Health Action Group calls for immediate action to repair “fundamentally broken” relationship with Horizon, province
The co-chairs of the Memramcook-Tantramar Community Task Force and the Rural Health Action Group are angry, and they’re not playing nice anymore.
In a strongly-worded letter addressed to the premier, Minister of Health Dorothy Shephard, Horizon CEO John Dornan, and other Horizon managers, the group says the relationship with Horizon management and the department of health has been “fundamentally broken” after an announcement on Friday informing them the Sackville Memorial Hospital would be closing its acute care unit.
Read the full letter of response here (pdf).
“We are embarrassed by our efforts to recruit people for jobs you seem to have no plans to actually offer. We are humiliated in the face of increasing numbers of citizens who ‘told us so’ about the government’s disingenuous nature. We believe that you don’t even understand your own Action Plan; it’s folly to think you can do ‘business as usual’ and then expect different results,” states the letter, signed by former Sackville mayors Pat Estabrooks and John Higham, and former councillor Margaret Tusz-King.
The Rural Health Action Group has been mobilizing since the summer, when Horizon announced cuts to ER service at the Sackville hospital, reducing it to 8 hours per day on weekends. That has since been expanded to a full seven days.
The group secured $15,000 in funding from the Town of Sackville to put toward recruitment activities, and has plans to work with the hospital foundation to fundraise further.
Group leaders were meeting with Horizon management, and had been informed that the most recent cuts to ER service were being made in order to maintain staffing levels for acute care.… Continue
Horizon to close acute care beds in Sackville
Horizon has informed local leaders of plans to temporarily close inpatient acute care at the Sackville Memorial Hospital. The network plans to convert all inpatient beds at the hospital to transitional care beds for patients who are waiting for long term care placement.
On Friday evening, Pat Estabrooks and John Higham, the co-chairs of the Memramcook-Tantramar Rural Health Action Group, received a letter from Horizon’s VP of clinical services, Eileen MacGibbon, making the announcement. MacGibbon gave no timeline, and attributed the move to the ongoing nursing shortage at the hospital.
The letter says that “going forward, Sackville patients who require acute care will be transferred to Horizon’s The Moncton Hospital.”
This latest move, although deemed temporary, means services at the Sackville Memorial Hospital are even more reduced today than they would have been had cuts announced in February 2020 gone through.
Just under 2 years ago, then Horizon CEO Karen McGrath announced a reduction in services to six rural hospitals, including the Sackville Memorial Hospital. The plan would have reduced existing 24/7 ER services by about one third, down to 16 hours per day, between 8am and midnight. It would also have converted acute care beds at the hospital to long term care beds.
After a massive outcry across the province, including protests at community hospitals, the provincial government pulled the plug. The plan was scrapped and a province wide consultation was promised before a new plan would be proposed.… Continue