Horizon Health has hired a recently retired executive director and former nurse to help retain and recruit health care workers at the Sackville Memorial Hospital. Nancy Parker retired recently from her position as executive director of the Moncton and Sackville hospitals, a position taken over by Christa Wheeler-Thorne in the summer of 2021. Parker has now taken on the interim, part-time role at the hospital.
Members of the Rural Health Action Committee are confident that Parker is a solid choice for the job, according to co-chair John Higham. Those who know Parker “speak extraordinarily highly of her abilities, and the attitude in which she goes about the work at the hospital and on all health services,” says Higham.
CHMA has requested an interview with Parker, to hear first hand about her work at the hospital.
The move to hire Parker is “a terrific stroke from Horizon”, says Higham, and what’s more, the move came from the health network, without the Rural Health Action Group directly asking for it.
“They identified [Parker] as an individual that would have great credibility to go back into the hospital and begin to address some of those impacts that she will see there, in staffing and in the organization of the hospital,” says Higham. “Most of us see that as a really big step forward to get that hospital back up to the condition it needs to be.”
Parker was previously a nurse at the Sackville hospital, says Higham, before she rose in the Horizon ranks to manage the southeast region hospitals.
The Rural Health Action Group was formed as a sub-committee of the Memramcook-Tantramar Task Force in the early summer of 2021, after Horizon announced weekend overnight closures for the Sackville Memorial Hospital emergency room. The group was working with Horizon officials on plans to support recruitment of nurses and doctors, but then in early December, Horizon suddenly announced the conversion of the acute care unit at Sackville Memorial Hospital to beds for people waiting placement in long term care facilities. The action group was blindsided, and responded with a letter of demands for the health network. They also organized a winter rally outside the hospital attended by hundreds of area residents in support of restoring services at the hospital.
In a Sackville town council meeting on December 8, Horizon CEO John Dornan explained the decision to close acute care was made in reaction to a crisis at the hospital. Resignations of two nurses made the unit no longer feasible to operate. But Dornan also stated a clear commitment “to supporting 24/7 care at Sackville Memorial, as well as active inpatient care, operating room services, specimen collection and emergency room care.”
“That’s been our goal for a while now since my time as a leader in Horizon as interim CEO, and we’re committed to doing that,” Dornan told town council. He also admitted, “that action speaks louder than words.“
The hiring of Nancy Parker seems to be the first action to serve as evidence of that commitment. At least Higham seems to think so.
“We’ve made the point,” says Higham, “and we think we’ve got some allies on the other side of the table now.”
“We feel pretty comfortable that this particular leadership in Horizon understands the value of the health services here, and understands how much value they are to the whole system,” says Higham.
That puts the role of the Rural Health Action Group at a crossroads. “We’ve had the fight, and it looks good. Now we’ve got to become much more practical about what our efforts are to make sure this all happens,” says Higham.
The group will be meeting among themselves and with regional mayors to discuss their future role, says Higham. “Our action group is going to have to look at ourselves and say, okay, are we the group now to move this forward in a longer term framework? And what are the roles that we need?”
“I think we have some very good ideas about what how we can complement and assist and push, so that some of these things come in quicker, and that we can have some faith that the hospital will be back to normal a little faster than we otherwise would expect it to be,” says Higham. “So we are now about to ask ourselves those questions.”
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