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The Lucknow Sentinel, 1979-03-21, Page 33Letters to the editor Write .letters to Timbrell • from page 4 measure. Also he must real- ize by now that senior citizens s in nursing homes also receive free medication. The medications are pre- scribed by doctors who have 'earned the right by years of extensive study to assess a patients health and prescribe accordingly. On further as- sessment by the , doctor, medication is discontinued if the doctor,sees fit. Let. us rfrain from point- ing an accusing finger in regard to hospital costs in the use of medications to pres- erve life. We have cared for patients from birth to old age but do. not feel we have the wisdom to say the elderly do not need prescribed medications. If ' our health program should change and Senior Citizens find they have to pay for !,dedications, so be it. Rest assured :those who can pay will pay. Those who can't pay hopefully will receive help. Mr. Joynt "cross the floor" and support your local hospital, you may be glad you did - some day. Take your foot off our oxygen tubing; it is our life line. Support the Wingham and District Hospital! Florence MacKenzie, R,N. Elizabeth Moncrief, R.N.. Book issue Dear Editor: It will , soon be time for teachers to choose the books for use in the English high school courses next year. With the wealth of good literature : available, , it shouldn't be necessary to choose any questionable books. Our schools were set upby parentsand taxpayers to . uphold the standards of right. and wrong taught 'in. the homes, while giving, the children the best in academic education. Parents. and taxpayers -are` now being told to `trust the teachers", "leave the deci- sions to the professionals", etc., when any discussion arises ove the choice .of material being: used id the \. schools. A child's first teachers are, his parents. By the time a student reaches high school age, parents have already had about thirteen years of teaching;., experience. This makes them rather expert in that field. Using books ` in school which teach moral standards different than those taught at home only confuse the minds of the students. The whole community is .then ..affected. Yours sincerely, Grace Austin. R, R. 7, Lucknow, Ont., Enjoys Sentinel To the editor: I wish, .t¢'renew my sdb- scription tcyour wonderful paper so. I am enclosing a cheque for nine dollars which is the rate for Senior Citiz- ens. We look forward to receiving your paper, which usually arrives each Thurs- day. Yours truly, Mrs, Charles Pearce, • Brantford, Ont. OPEN LETTER TO HEALTH MINISTER HON. DENNIS TIMBRELL + + + 4. You are also proposing that if a hospital provided • services to ' s iclk people be- yond the guidelines'that you have thought up, such a • hospital would be fined ($12,000 per hospital bed in excess ,of your formula). Now let's look at that one. The people of this commun- ity have spent millions of dollars and years of their lives in building up their local hospital; it , is their - hospital and ,their property. Are they now to betreated as .criminals for tending to the sick? Are we to prosecute the Good Samaritan? This is not just a silly proposal based on stupidity - it is a proposal couched in the language of insanity. Dear Sir: I am writing to you with regard to recent "directives" from your ministry pertain- ing to the provision of health care- in this province's hos- pitals. 1. You are suggesting that existing hospital beds be left unoccupied in order to re- duce the numbers of avail- able to an arbitrary level of 3.5 beds per 1,000 popula- tion. Why? Please don't, trot out the hoary myth of runaway healths costs - health care's percentage of the GPP has been declining for the last three; years and is now; at 4.13 per cent, at its lowest point in this decade. These figures are from the Ontario Hospital Association - if you are not familiar with them, try reading the find- ings of your own Elgie Select Committee on . Health Care Costs. The number of available beds for active treatment patients in this province went down from 5.25 per 1,000 in 1960 to 4.5 in 1976; that is the lowest ratio of . any province except Newfound- land. So, why? + . + + • 2. Your propdsed "form- ula" would reduce the num- ber . of beds in one local hospital (Goderich) from the present Jevel of 71 to 43. Over the last few months the level of occupancy . of. these beds has been 90 per cent (I agree . that this is already above the level of safety .:and means 'mix'ing young and.old patients, clean and infected cases etc., but these measures have been forced upon by the previous reductions in the hospital's budget). This means that if your proposals become reality we shall be forced to turn away a number of people requiring acute hospital care, Where" shall we send. them Mr. Timbrell? When our "allocation" is full, what shall I say to the parents of the child with . acute appendicitis - take your child home - its chances of surviving any resultantperi- tonitis is one in ten? Certainly that is an emo- tionalargument and advised- ly so •- some xeople actually • care about what happens -to their families. + + + 3. Do you think that by legislation you can control the amount of disease in society? Well, history is full of examples of a little power going to the heads of little men - remember King Can- ute and his advisors? I. am told that Idi Amin, in Uganda, has attempted to abolish certain infectious dis- eases by making them illegal - an intellectual feat on a par with your own. •f + + 5.. You are proposing fur- thermore that the people who are sick in the hospital for too long, including people in psychiatric hospital beds, should be penalized (to the tune of $10 per day). This is equally insane. So we areto financially penalize both the Samaritan and the Pharisee? +' + 6. You are, or should be, aware of a recent death in Toronto which occurred after the patient was shipped from hospital to hospital ' because- all their beds were full. Are you expecting more such deaths Mr. Timbrell? (Of course not,. Toronto's acute' hospital beds are ap- parently to be reduced by over 1,000). But if not, why does ' a recent circular to all coroners in Ontario (Memo A-416, January 2, 1979)'reouest that "the. Ministry of Health be informed in advance of in- quests where the Coroner suspects that Health services may not have been approp- riately provided"? + + 7. The legality of your proposal has ,not yet, I think been questioned. We live, unfortunately, in a society where political ignorance an apathy, ,are. widespread; in., deed many people (especially those. serving on Hospital Boards) seem to think that. ministerial pronouncements somehow have the force of law and must therefore be obeyed. ' Yet it is only, two or three years since the Supreme Court of Ontario,, ruling illegal , your predecessor's directives to close local hos- pitals, made clear what sure- ly must be obvious to any thinking person. That is, that the public hospitals of this province are the property of the people of this province; they are not the property of the provincial government. + + + When the provincial gov- ernment monopolized Health Care Insurance some years ago, carefully legislating out of existence any competition from the more efficient priv- ate sector, they contracted with local hospitals to prov- ide health care in return for adequate funding. The hospitals have more than kept their end of the bargain. Your veiled at- tempts to now indirectly close dawn these hospitals, perhaps partly because of the financial incompetence of your own Ministry (an over- head of 30 per cent?) is not simply immoral; it is, I should suspect, probably al- so illegal. I further question whether you or your fellow civil ser- vants can provide meaning- ful answers (as opposed to political platitudes) to the questions I have raised. The main purpose of these rhetorical points is, then, to bring them to the attention of the public. For any person who intends to be sick -or injured in this society will have to answer these ques- tions themselves. Yours faithfully, Dr. J. M. Watts, Goderich. Council'nirites to Tina, brell Dear Sir: We, as members of the council of the Town of Luck - now, oppose the cutback of beds at the Wingham and District Hospital and herein voice our disapproval and give a few 9f our reasons. Health care in this area will deteriorate rapidly if such cutbacks take,' place and we, as a. council, will not standby placidly and let this happen. Our people expect and _de- serve better. The Wingham hospital has consistently operated effici- ently for years, even being under budget .several times. Are we being penalized for this? This hospital has ,a lower costa per daythan any hospital in the province. Our occupancy rater -is about 78 per cent and the average patient stay is 7.3 days,. below the provincial average. -Wingham has pioneered in certain fields'.: of medical science,. Community and area residents have worked hard to establish :the Wing - ham hospital and deserve the high quality care theyy have come to expect from the .staff itself and all the doctors and specialists who serve here. If our active beds are lost,. we will not .retain the highly trained, medical staff we have here, nor will we attract the specialists who come to the. hospital on a regular basis. We now have specialists in almost every area of medic- ine; a mental health resource centre; cancer clinic; 'nursing assistants training school; therapy department;. and other' ancillary services which we will lose if we lose active beds. These are the services the public has be- come accustomed to receiv- ing; they have a right to these services. We have not yet received a satisfactory explanation of ., how the Ministry's. 3.5 figure was attained. We understand it is based ort a referral population of 12,000. In reality, our referral popula- tion is 15,000. Wingham is the hub of a wheel, with the nearest hospital 23-25 miles away. This means that this hospital alone serves an area of 315 square miles in which . 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