Health unit merger talks underway
The local board of health will decide whether to merge with surrounding health units by the end of the month, Brockville city council heard this week.
Dr. Linna Li, the medical officer of health at the Leeds, Grenville and Lanark District Health, told city council they have a looming deadline to decide whether to join forces with the health units in Kingston and Belleville after the province put out the call last year.
“We are taking a proactive and positive approach to the idea of merging,” Li said.
“We are still in the feasibility assessment piece of it. We haven't actually fully assessed whether a merger exploration ... would actually be possible, whether it would be a good idea.”
She said a feasibility study is currently underway, and later this month, the board of health will discuss the results of that study at its next meeting and decide whether they want to proceed with a merger. If it's the will of the board, they need to apply to the province by April 2.
Li stressed, however, that while a merger would include some organization adjustments, all three health units agree they would maintain their focus on front line services.
“One of the key components has been a maintenance of front line services, especially local and rural services. That has been a point of conversation and a point of focus of the exploration all along,” she said.
The idea of a potential merger was first floated locally last year after the province announced in August a plan for a “stronger public health sector,” which included an offer of “one-time funding, resources and supports to local public health agencies that decide to voluntarily merge.”
In a memo to local health agencies about the voluntary mergers in October, the province's chief medical officer of health said combining smaller health units was one of the foundational components of the strategy to strengthen public health.
The idea, according to the province, would be to “refine and clarify the roles of local public health units, to reduce overlap of services and focus resources on improving people's access to programs and services close to home.”
Mergers have “significant potential to address long-standing challenges in the public health system and present an opportunity to work toward a vision for an optimized and better co-ordinated public health system,” Dr. Kieran Moore said in the memo.
Peter Mckenna, chairperson of the local board of health, said part of the reason they're exploring the idea is because it provides an opportunity to expand services beyond their current capacity.
“Our board has embraced this opportunity,” Mckenna said, adding the health unit is “doing OK” with its current budget of around $14 million.
“We're a very small health-care organization. We didn't see ourselves in 10 years thriving,” he said.
In order to thrive and expand, he said they would need a massive influx of new funding — otherwise, they'd just continue scraping by.
“We didn't expect a big, massive influx, so we looked ahead, strategically, and said over the next 10 years, we need to grow somehow, and be more sophisticated,” Mckenna said.
“Health care is very expensive to deliver. It's complex. In order for us to thrive, and to serve the population, the board felt this was an opportunity we had to explore, and that's what we're doing.”
While it is a voluntary process, the province has been clear they want health units to merge. Li said before the pandemic, the province had plans to reduce the number of health units across the province from 35 to 10.
Most health units across the province opposed that plan, and during the pandemic the idea was shelved. Now, the plan is for health units to come forward with voluntary merger proposals, and Li says they're simply being proactive.
The province says they want health units to serve a population of 500,000 or more, Li said, and Leeds Grenville and Lanark only has 190,000. Merging with Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington, and Hastings Prince Edward, would get them up to a population of 550,000.
“It's a set of health units with whom we have much in common. Like them, we are a mixed urban-rural health unit, with fairly substantial rural components, especially upward to the north,” she said.
Even if all the boards vote to proceed, the province still needs to approve the merger.