County may bid for former hospital

Dufferin County council is supporting a bid to retain long-term hospital beds, and could end up seeking ownership of the former Shelburne District Hospital, now the "Shelburne campus" of Headwaters Health Care Centre (HHCC).

In any event, said Mayor Ed Crewson, there's a need to sit with HHCC and ministry officials in an effort to find a way to keep the long-term beds where they are.

The hospital board at its next meeting will consider CEO Cholly Boland's recommendation to close all 22 beds at Shelburne and move 13 of them to Orangeville. In recent interviews, Mr. Boland has suggested the X-ray facility would remain at Shelburne although it might be moved to a different location.

But later, he told this newspaper that his recommendation was only "under study."

At county council last week, Mayor Crewson said there is "an overwhelming groundswell of opposition to closing longterm beds in Shelburne." He said the care for patients at Shelburne is "dramatically different from that of acute care in Orangeville."

He cited an instance of the family of a palliative care patient feeling so good about the level of care that they wondered if they shouldn't be paying.

The mayor said the hospital CEO is taking his recommendation to the board "in response to what he believes is a frozen budget. His one course of action is to close the beds at Shelburne and move 13 to Orangeville."

A specific breakdown of estimated budgetary savings was not immediately available but Mr. Boland has said there would be layoffs.

Shelburne council had already resolved to form a sub committee to "address the impact and best practices for health care in Town of Shelburne as a public strategy meeting approach."

"All we're asking for is the minister to be open to considering alternatives," Mayor Crewson said last week.

"One the county should consider, I would suggest, the level of care provided there is (similar to) Dufferin Oaks. If a hip replacement, you go there to convalesce. It is a place friendly, supportive. We're all going to have to die one day. The palliative level of care there is terrific."

He said he did broach the topic of the county taking over the Shelburne campus.

"They didn't say no," he said, and added that it would matter not whether HHCC or The Oaks administered the facility, so long as the level of care continued.