The superhospital was a bad idea from the beginning
As one of the people who actively campaigned, from the early 1990s on, against the idea of a single large super hospital facility, I was quite intrigued to read in Henry Aubin’s column (“MUHC’s ‘father’ saddened by current state,” Gazette, Dec. 22) that the so-called father of the super hospital concept, Nicolas Steinmetz, says he is saddened by the chaotic state of affairs at the McGill University Health Centre.
Steinmetz is quoted as saying: “It’s a failure on the part of those leaders in our society who had the responsibility to oversee this.”
Looking back, I am not very forgiving of the secrecy, double-talk, browbeating, high-handedness and contempt for opposing viewpoints that characterized the MUHC project from the very beginning, when it was under Steinmetz’s command. This lack of transparency prompt- ed, among other things, the abrupt cancellation of a public consultation that was to have been held at the McGill School of Architecture.
In my view, the “one superhospital for all” concept was moribund from the start. Paris, with a population of 10 million, took 20 years to build one “super hospital” and it came in way over budget in addition to way behind schedule. In Quebec, with a population of eight million, we have undertaken to build two superhospitals — a Frenchlanguage teaching facility and an English-language one — at the same time. Does that make sense? And what about the fact that the Paris hospital was hit with Legionnaires’ disease on its opening day? How lucky they were that there were other hospitals still operating in the region!
The blanket refusal to consider renovation of existing buildings instead of construction of one super hospital defied all logic and common sense, particularly in view of the continuing trend toward shorter hospital stays and the increasing miniaturization of most equipment. There was no shortage of space in existing facilities, so a phased renovation, combined with strategic new construction where required, would have all been completed by now. To no one’s surprise, the “oneproject-one-site” policy was eventually overturned, slowly but surely — witness the rehabilitation of the Montreal General. What’s more, the recent Baron report predicting a shortage of space in the new Glen Yards superhospital means additional renovations to existing buildings is very likely.
They say hindsight is 20/20, but criticism of the original single superhospital idea is something that has long been on the public record. Aubin says, “Let those who criticized Steinmetz’s vision from the outset do no gloating.”
Well, OK. But Steinmetz needs to do some wondering about his contribution to the fiasco that has unfolded ever since. Not unlike the Olympic Stadium, the MUHC calamity is the natural outcome of grandiosity winning out over careful, well-considered, responsible design. This father of the superhospital concept may well wash his hands of the whole affair. But the rest of us in the community have been left holding his problem child.