Patients’ group up in arms
Community wasn’t consulted on proposed MUHC merger
The patient-rights committee of the McGill University Health Centre is incensed that it has not been consulted about a proposed merger between the MUHC and other health-care institutions in western Montreal.
The Central Users’ Committee sought unsuccessfully to have one of its members sit on the search committee that would recommend the successor to MUHC executive director Normand Rinfret, who retired Friday. But the patients’ group has since discovered through news reports that the search committee has not only recommended Rinfret’s successor but that the MUHC itself will be the subject of a far-reaching merger.
“It’s frustrating to be shut out again,” Amy Ma, co-president of the users’ committee, told the Montreal Gazette Monday.
“It would have been more conducive to an open dialogue if they had shared this information with us in private before it had to be leaked to the media. For us, it’s one thing for the board to have a mandate to find a new person to replace Normand Rinfret, but it’s quite another thing when you find out about potential mergers.
“Nobody from the MUHC community was consulted,” Ma added.
On Thursday, Dr. Lawrence Rosenberg, head of West-Central Montreal Health, told staff that he was informed that the MUHC’s board of directors had recommended to the government that he be appointed the next head of the MUHC. Rosenberg outlined in a statement his vision of leading the MUHC, explaining that he wanted to unite McGill affiliated health institutions.
On Friday, the chairman of the board of the West Island health authority, Richard Legault, issued his own statement confirming a second merger proposal, and said that the “MUHC board has conveyed to the minister ... two acceptable options.”
In the midst of the duelling statements, MUHC board chairman Claudio Bussandri has remained silent. Ma confirmed that neither Bussandri nor MUHC officials have addressed staff about the prospects of a major merger and the potential impact on patient care. The MUHC is also gearing up to eliminate up to 750 positions throughout its hospital network.
Although Rinfret finished his term at the MUHC on Friday, the organization did not issue an internal memo stating who would be in charge on an interim basis. Martine Alfonso, formerly head of the Montreal Children’s Hospital, was promoted over the summer to associate director-general of the MUHC and is currently the topranking administrator.
Ma noted that the statements by Rosenberg and Legault appear to speak on behalf of the MUHC.
“We’ve had statements from Rosenberg, we’ve had statements from the chair of the board of the West Island (authority), but our own board has been silent,” Ma said. “It’s exasperating.”
Richard Fahey, director of public affairs of the MUHC, declined to comment on Rosenberg’s statement Thursday. Reached on Monday, Fahey responded: “Same statement as last Thursday. Sorry, I have nothing more.”
Six highly-placed sources have told the Montreal Gazette that Health Minister Gaétan Barrette has given his blessing to Rosenberg’s candidacy and his proposal to merge both West-Central Montreal Health and the West Island health authority with the MUHC.
Those two organizations are each known by the French acronym, CIUSSS, and were created on April 1, 2015, under Barrette’s streamlining reform to slash administrative expenses and centralize health-care management. West-Central Montreal Health merged the administration of 30 health-care institutions, including the Jewish General Hospital.
The West Island CIUSSS, headed by Benoit Morin, merged the administration of St. Mary’s Hospital in Côte-des-Neiges, the Douglas Mental Health University Institute in Verdun and the Lakeshore General Hospital in Pointe-Claire, among other institutions.
Rosenberg, a McGill-trained surgeon and former researcher, has argued in favour of merging McGill-affiliated institutions like the Jewish General, the Douglas and St. Mary’s with the MUHC. By comparison, Morin has proposed merging only his CIUSSS with the MUHC.
Pierre Hurteau, the other copresident of the MUHC users’ committee, has expressed concern about the “monstrous size” of the proposed mergers with the MUHC. Hurteau is writing a letter to Bussandri seeking clarification.
Ma echoed Hurteau’s concerns about merging the MUHC, which itself is the result of a merger in the 1990s of the Montreal General, the Montreal Neurological, Montreal Chest, Montreal Children’s and Royal Victoria hospitals. The MUHC also oversees Lachine Hospital, and in April 2015, it opened the $1.3-billion superhospital in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, consolidating onto one site the MUHC Research Institute, the Children’s, the Chest and the Royal Vic.
“With all this centralization, it necessarily involves some degree of detaching leadership from staff at the local level,” Ma said.
“So I really do hope that whoever becomes (head of the MUHC) at the end of the day will have some sort of local administration in place because all of these other CIUSSSes are in the west end of the island of Montreal, and the realities that people face in the suburbs of the West Island are quite different than the realities of the inner-city and the urban population that the MUHC serves.”
Ma also criticized Barrette for not being up-front with the public. Barrette initially pledged to exclude from mergers the MUHC and the Centre hospitalier de l’université de Montréal (CHUM), but last year he merged the boards of directors of the CHUM and the pediatric Sainte-Justine Hospital.
“This lack of transparency, this opaqueness from the government I find jarring, because at the end of the day, we as taxpayers pay Barrette’s salary. We are the ones who are going to be paying this new executive director and we don’t get a say, but a brush-off ?”