Tues Apr 30: City Council Highlights + Rural Healthcare Concerns

Plus: Working group reports that 126 people in Grey and Bruce counties are chronically unhoused, having been without shelter for more than 6 months

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Mayor Ian Boddy opening the April 29, 2024, meeting of Owen Sound City Council.

Are small and rural hospitals being phased out? In this letter to the editor, Norah Beatty, Co-Chair of the Grey Bruce Health Coalition, raises questions and concerns about the news that Durham hospital is downsizing.

“With no inpatient beds after June 3, what happens when someone needs to be admitted? I guess they go by ambulance to another hospital. Ambulance services will need to increase, or response times will increase for the area. Is this better care for people closer to home, as the announcement claims? I think not.

This sounds to me as though emergent/urgent care will be like a walk-in clinic.  Knowing that you may need to be admitted, I think people will be inclined to travel to another hospital (with real beds) if they think their loved one may need admission.  That would result in a much lower use of the Durham emergent/urgent care unit. 

It won’t be long before that unit is closed because of greatly diminished use.”

Keep reading and see what the GB Health Coalition is doing to raise awareness and protest healthcare cuts:

Letter: Rally to Save Healthcare as Small Local Hospitals are Closing

Full subscribers, there’s a lot more for you below, including…

• Details on capital needs at the Owen Sound Fire Station as Council approves a pre-design study into renovation or expansion options

• The outcome of Councilor Jon Farmer’s motion urging provincial and federal governments to increase social assistance rates

• Information on Council’s decision to apply $122,000 from the 2023 budget surplus to the Tom Thomson Art Gallery’s debt

• A report from a local committee with updated homelessness statistics and results from January/February housing placements

~ Miranda

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