No plans for urgent care at Grace site, source says
There are no blueprints being worked on for an urgent-care centre at the former Grace hospital site, according to a source involved in planning for the $2-billion new mega-hospital.
Instead, the focus has shifted to maintaining emergency room services at the Ouellette campus of the Windsor Regional Hospital, said the high-ranking local health official, who did not want to be named.
But Windsor Regional CEO David Musyj was adamant Wednesday that no decision has been made and the Grace site — currently owned by the City of Windsor — will be used at some future date for an urgent-care centre.
“That is fiction,” he said of the Grace site no longer being part
of the plan. “If someone is saying that, they don’t know what they are talking about. Unless it’s coming from (Ontario Health Minister) Eric Hoskins or (Premier) Kathleen Wynne, they are liars.”
To be final, any plan for the mega-hospital system has to be cleared by the steering committee, the Local Health Integration Network and then the Health Ministry for approval, Musyj pointed out.
“None of that has occurred.” Meetings are taking place almost daily in planning for the $2-billion mega-hospital system, he said.
When Hoskins came to Windsor on Dec. 1 to confirm a new acute-care hospital will be built in Windsor, he asked local healthcare officials to consider expanding services — even on an interim basis — at the Ouellette campus instead of building a new urgentcare centre at the Grace site.
Local discussions are now leaning toward doing that on a permanent basis, including asking local physicians how urgent care might work best, according to the source.
Keeping the existing emergency room at the Ouellette campus with a full staff of physicians and nurses is emerging as a priority — and not just providing urgent care, the source said.
What hasn’t been decided is whether the emergency room downtown would be open 24 hours and who would be responsible for overseeing the staff — whether it would be Windsor Regional or Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare, which under the current plan is slated to take back ownership of the downtown hospital, said the source.
Mayor Drew Dilkens said a costing review of maintaining or upgrading emergency services at the Ouellette campus needs to be completed before a final decision is made about the Grace site.
“If anything is changed here, that would be a surprise to everyone in the process,” he said. “The steering committee has to put together the elements for the ministry and has not submitted the information.”
In terms of the Grace site’s fate, the city is in a “wait and see” position, Dilkens said.
“The hospital has understood we would not wait forever,” he said. “No one is jumping at our door to develop the Grace site, but we expect to hear something by the end of the year.”
Dilkens hopes full emergency services will remain downtown.
“The more services the better,” Dilkens said, though he realizes “the funding envelope is not wide open.”
It does appear the Ouellette campus will be used initially as a temporary urgent-care centre — without around-the-clock availability, Musyj said. Ambulatory surgery is also likely to be provided, but nothing is yet definite, he said.
Musyj expects the steering committee will approve a more detailed plan in six to eight weeks.
Neither the Health Ministry nor Hoskins’s office provided a statement to the Star on Wednesday.
The downtown hospital’s aging buildings facing Ouellette will likely come down and be rebuilt, while the parking garage and newest infrastructure facing Goyeau Avenue will be kept, according to the source.
Sixty new acute-care mentalhealth beds that were to go downtown under the initial plan would instead be added at Hotel-Dieu’s existing site on Prince Road, the source said. That would leave room to develop outpatient, chronic care and emergency room services at the Ouellette campus.
Discussions about the final mega-hospital plan are ongoing, said Bill Marra, vice-president of external affairs for Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare.
“We are working closely with our colleagues at Windsor Regional Hospital,” he said. “This will include the use of our downtown property for what had been originally proposed, as well as the interim urgent-care centre or satellite emergency.
“We are looking forward to taking back our site and delivering services there.”
Coun. Rino Bortolin, who represents the downtown area, believes development of the Grace site “would be later on” — if it happens at all.
“I took away from the (Dec. 1) announcement they are going to cut the Grace property,” he said. “Especially when pressed they said (urgent care at Ouellette campus) would be temporary. Well, temporary can be 30 years.”
There is no way he will support the former Grace site sitting vacant for any length of time given its size and location in the downtown core, Bortolin said.
“If temporary status means 20 years, I will be the first one to make a motion for a development strategy for the Grace site aside from the hospital,” he said. “We need to develop it rather than sit on it.
“Development fees there are waived. There will be lots of opportunities to use that property to generate revenue, whether that’s commercial residential or a mix. It remains ours and you can’t let that hole sit there for decades.”
Taking the Grace site off the table and building on existing infrastructure at the Ouellette campus would be a “step in the right direction,” said Philippa Von Ziegenweidt, spokeswoman for Citizens for an Accountable Mega-Hospital Planning Process.
“I have believed right after the announcement (the Grace site) was dead,” she said. “Reuse of existing infrastructure in the plan would be great. It would be very smart to keep (ER) in the same location.”