What do Windsor-Essex Residents think about the Hospital Proposal?
A well-chosen hospital location and its satellites will provide access to all its residents, regardless of income or where they live. Sites should also be environmentally sustainable. The proposed hospital plan does not meet these criteria.
The following is a list of individual concerns CAMPP supporters have sent in, however they are not all necessarily representative of CAMPP. CAMPP's concerns primarily relate to the proposed location and site selection.
Lack of Community Engagement:
Reduced Accessibility:
Lack of increased healthcare:
A Single Site hospital:
Reduction in Healthcare:
Environmental and health concerns:
Unnecessary land use (the 60 acre mistake):
As an economic anchor:
Costs:
Use of P3 financing:
Waste of current facilities:
Zoning and Planning:
Distance to other amenities:
The following is a list of individual concerns CAMPP supporters have sent in, however they are not all necessarily representative of CAMPP. CAMPP's concerns primarily relate to the proposed location and site selection.
Lack of Community Engagement:
- The Hospital Steering Committee was not willing to consult or engage the community, not very transparent or accountable about their methods and reasons; they have been dishonest about the process.
- There was no ACCOUNTABLE site selection process to begin with. The site selection process did not engage vulnerable residents to hear their concerns for future healthcare.
- There was no quantifiable data used to analyze decisions made that we are aware of.
- Reasonable and valid concerns have been brought forth but neither the Steering Committee nor the ESCLHIN have addressed them. All leaders were, and remain, extremely uncooperative. A number of legitimate citizen critiques and concerns have been ignored by the hospital board, the LHIN and municipal representatives are supposed to serve and represent citizen concerns.
- There was no public discussion prior to the decision to demolish rather than repurposing the current facilities e.g. as a long term care facility.
- Windsor, in particular, needs the MOH to recognize the flaws in the plan and assist in the outcome of a more practical and equitable hospital system plan.
Reduced Accessibility:
- Particularly difficult for those who don’t drive, but longer travel times for the majority regardless of means of transportation.
- Population density was not prioritized in determining the site.
Lack of increased healthcare:
- No increase in staffed beds despite current overcrowding and long wait times.
- The reduction of two Emergency Depts. into one larger Emergency Department for over 300,000 users will likely lead to further unacceptable wait times. 1 or maybe 2 hours may be acceptable but the current average of 4-10 hours is not.
- The lack of long term care capacity is negatively impacting current delivery of service severely, and yet this proposal does not address this crippling negative factor
A Single Site hospital:
- Lacks contingency planning, efficiency and limits potential accessibility to all.
- It lacks appropriate redundancy in the event of disaster or epidemic.
- Research suggests single site hospital over 400 beds becomes inefficient. We need at least 2 maybe 3 hospitals.
- Again, there was no quantifiable data used to analyze decisions made that we are aware of.
- There aren’t any cities in Canada with healthcare as distant as what is proposed in Windsor Essex.
- A single site for 320,000 people is well below Canadian average of 2.14 hospitals per 100,000.
- Most other cities near 200,000 people have at least two hospitals unless there are alternate hospitals in an immediately adjacent city (generally within 20 km).
Reduction in Healthcare:
- The proposal leaves no acute care/trauma in the City core.
- removes access to healthcare services from highest concentration of low income residents in the entire county who are also the least likely to own a vehicle and most likely to suffer from acute illness.
- Replacing 2 urban hospitals with small fragments of hospital services like the urgent care clinic and satellites will not meet the healthcare needs of the residents in the core.
- The proposed urgent care centre is intended for “less serious” conditions only.
- The proposed urgent care centre won’t be open 24/7. Nor does the proposal include any satellites in Essex County.
- The proposal concentrates addiction and mental health services in the downtown core rather than recognizing regional need.
Environmental and health concerns:
- Sprawl, increased travel times (wasted energy and increased pollution)
- Discourages active transportation.
- Outdated plan based on Smart Choices reports.
- The goal of building the new hospital on greenfield land has been baked into the plan since the masterplan was submitted in 2009.
- Our environmental priorities and planning policy no longer tolerate such unsustainable development.
- Climate change considerations with regard to land use planning were not included in the site selection process.
- The increased distance for a greater number of users will cause exponential increased air pollution from more driving distances and have a negative impact on our air quality and environment.
- The increased distance from a greater number of users assumes motor vehicular access, and in turn, makes the demand for more parking facilities.
- The proposed design of parking for the proposed mega hospital is the least desirable outcome environmentally because of acres of asphalt causing large heat sink outcomes.
- Alternate parking is available in most areas of the city.
Unnecessary land use (the 60 acre mistake):
- A 60 acre site is not necessary (Humber River Hospital was built on a 30 acre site)
- The proposed site will waste productive farmland. It’s not responsible to develop farmland when there is brownfield and infill land available.
- 60 acres is not needed other than for surface parking rather than parking garages. The suggestion is also that land is needed for future regeneration of the hospital on the same site, but let’s let future generations decide that. They may not like the location any more than we like the current proposed site.
As an economic anchor:
- The hospital is being used to promote new development while removing the current two hospitals as anchors from the heart of the city, causing blight.
- The proposal will be a net disinvestment of healthcare from Windsor’s core.
- It will also draw medical offices from the city towards the proposed site.
- Economic losses to the city were not given consideration in the process or the Economic Impact Study. They included only the gains without weighing the losses.
Costs:
- Infrastructure vs parking garage, costs per bed or per sq. ft., additional space in building beyond reason bringing up the cost.
- Increased transit costs to the city (quoted by City administration at $1M/year to operate).
- The proposed purchase price of $6M, at $100k/acre, far exceeds the fair market price of un-serviced farmland (farmland sells for $10k/acre).
- The proposed hospital costs more per square foot ($1000) than in other jurisdictions like the US at $250 per square foot or Ontario’s recent past (a decade ago $250/ sq. ft.) Currently $350-550/ sf would be more acceptable.
- The proposed hospital contains more square footage than necessary e.g. Vancouver 700 beds in 1 million square feet. It is ⅓ larger than our current hospitals combined but will have approx. the same number of beds.
- The hospital and/or lender can lease space for profit while the taxpayer pays for that space.
- $220 million in additional infrastructure could be saved if the site was within an established neighbourhood. The savings could even be used to pay for $90 million worth of parking garages, plus there are also alternate parking spaces within the heart of the city.
Use of P3 financing:
- Concerns about the potential for unnecessarily costly P3 development (Public Private Partnership) have not been allayed. This financial model has been shown to cost much more per bed to create, and wrests control over required embedded services from local hospital management, making future health service budgets more difficult to manage in the best interests of public service. The Windsor project can lead the way in new hospital system development that uses responsible fiscal stewardship through publicly funded development and management.
Waste of current facilities:
- The two hospitals (renovated in 2005 and 2008) The Cancer Centre (2001) and Ronald McDonald House (2015) will all be demolished under the plan.
- A more sustainable proposal would incorporate at least some of this investment in the plans for the new hospital to avoid having to build them again from scratch or at least repurpose these building.
- The destruction of all current capital assets in the proposed plan shows reckless disregard for a health care system sorely lacking in capacity to meet current and future demographic needs for a population aging in place.
Zoning and Planning:
- The proposed site is in a yet-to-be-established neighbourhood far from Windsor’s core.
- Increased development of the land south of the airport unwarranted by current and predicted population growth.
- The hospital making demands of the city rather than the city controlling zoning.
- There has been no debate about the proposed hospital location or the proposed UCC at Windsor City Council.
Distance to other amenities:
- The proposed site is more than three times further from our US hospital resources than presently, causing decreased access to critical acute care services absent from the local critical menu of services.
- It is the opposite end of the city from the university which shows no consideration to medical students.