GANDER, N.L. – Gander and Grand Falls-Windsor are at odds when it comes to health care issues in central Newfoundland.
Gander mayor Percy Farwell made his differing view abundantly clear in addressing the remarks of Grand Falls-Windsor Mayor Barry Manuel, who wrote Dr. Peter Vaughn, who is carrying out an external review of Central Health.
“I’m not going to tell Mayor Manuel how to do his job, or how he should advocate on behalf of his community, but this review is not a platform to advocate where services should be delivered from,” he told the Beacon April 30.
The review was ordered to address senior management and governance concerns.
In the letter, Manuel stated the town’s support for the current senior management staff, and that issues at James Paton Memorial Hospital aren’t new. Furthermore, he is concerned the outcome of the review could move health care services away from Grand Falls-Windsor.
“We fear decisions made on services for Central Health will be politically motivated at the expense of Central Newfoundland Regional Health Facility (sic),” Manuel said in the letter.
According to Farwell, the Town of Gander sees the review as a means of addressing the ongoing issues with the recruitment and retention of physicians, which, he said, shouldn’t be marginalized just because it’s something that has happened at James Paton for a “long time.”
Farwell said management and governance has been highlighted by staff as an underlying cause of these problems, and he hopes the review can address this.
“This is something that has gone well beyond the normal course of business, and if anyone is trying to characterize this issue as that, they are deliberately or otherwise being disingenuous,” he said.
Farwell added that Manuel’s statement gives cause to the need for a review, based on the fact that one community has a pleasant relationship with the health authority while the rest of the region has ongoing issues.
“The submission that I’ve seen is kind of supporting evidence to what a number of people think is the problem, that there’s too much influence and bias based on a certain area,” he said. “That can manifest itself in many different ways, not only where services might be delivered, but how other outlying areas are viewed by senior decision makers.”
When it comes to Manuel’s claims that services are being moved to Gander over Grand Falls-Windsor, Farwell said it’s something he isn’t privy to.
“That’s either pure speculation and coffee-shop hearsay, or it’s based on some sort of inside information that isn’t available to other stakeholders,” he said. “It’s not about an economic tug-o-war between two communities, at least that’s our view, because we are part of a broader region.”
But if and when a decision to place a service within the region is made, he hopes it’s done in an objective and unbiased way that benefits the entire area.
The Department of Health didn’t respond to the Beacon’s request to speak with Minister John Haggie about the allegation of decisions being politically motivated.
When the external review was announced earlier this year Haggie said, “The noise level about governance and management of the health authority had got to a point which is outside of what you would normally expect from the role of routine senior management discussions.”
He also noted some of the biggest concerns he had surrounding this issue dealt with recruitment and retention, along with lack of specialists and primary care physicians.
Adam.randell@ganderbeacon.ca
