Mega-hospital proponents tackle criticisms of project

Proponents of a proposed $2-billion mega-hospital in Windsor, Ont. hope the worst is behind them when it comes to critics trying to derail the project.

Four years of planning culminated at a five-hour city council meeting Monday where Windsor politicians put the final piece of stage-one in place.

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Even as council voted 9-1 to pay for the city's share of the mega-hospital, dozens of residents made a last-minute plea to push pause on the project.

A major focal point of the criticisms still focus on building the main hospital site on County Road 42 near the airport.

Residents maintain the location would create urban sprawl, deter new investment in the downtown and create barriers for anyone in the core trying to get to the hospital.

Officials at Windsor Regional Hospital met with CBC News this week to talk about what they call "common misconceptions" about the mega-hospital plan. CEO David Musyj hopes the critics will now "rally around" the plan if the province moves it into stage two.

Lack of consultation

Philippa von Zeigenweidt was first up to bat at council on Monday. She was one of many to argue the public was not informed about the hospital plans until it was too late.

Musyj disputes this. His communication team, which has been trumpeting the call for the new mega-hospital, has a list of 50 town hall meetings held since 2012.

Once a steering committee was established, that group elicited public input through surveys, public meetings, blog posts, editorial board meetings as well as radio call-in shows.

"We've been told by the ministry of health, we've been told by other health care organizations, we've been told by planning experts that this has been the most inclusive, community engagement process — at stage one of a five-stage process — they've ever seen, and it's not even close," Musyj said.

Barriers to health

Ward 4 resident Lori Hill was one of many residents to argue removing the hospital from downtown would create a barrier to health for people living within Windsor's core.

But the Ouellette campus' emergency room manager Dr. Paul Bradford says the new urgent-care centre, to be built at the old Grace Hospital location, will essentially be a second emergency room that will service people living in the core.

Windsor Regional Hospital generally sees about 70,000 people at its Met campus in a year and 50,000 people at its Ouellette campus. Patients often face long wait times, up to five or six hours on average, because patients are waiting to be admitted. There is often a shortage of beds.

Having this second urgent-care centre in the core should change all that, Bradford said. Windsor's proposed urgent-care centre will be built to handle up to 60,000 people, though it is expected to see about 30,000 patients when it first opens.

"Without having ambulances coming in and beds taken up by people waiting to be admitted, you can get people treated sooner," he told CBC News.

He hopes to see similar results already shown in places like Toronto, where wait times at the urgent-care satellite site in that city have been maintained at about three hours.

"That's worth achieving for our future, for my kids, for our community, for everyone," Bradford said.

Downtown exodus

Critics have also argued there will be a lack of investment in the downtown once the hospital leaves for the rural corners of the city. But hospital officials and city planners say there has been renewed investment interest in the downtown because of the proposed mega-hospital plan.

"I think the development community is monitoring this and wanting to know where there might be opportunities to invest in development in the months and years to come," said Michael Cooke, manager of planning policy at the City of Windsor.

His office is already fielding calls about zoning around mega-hospital satellite sites like the urgent care centre. That kind of discussion is typical for such projects, according to Cooke.

"Most definitely, with something on that scale in terms of institutional use like an urgent-care centre, [it] would likely spur — in the surrounding area — an interest in those types of uses," he said.