AN IMPORTANT TRUTH came more forcibly into focus at the Ontario Hospital Coalition session in Shelburne Friday when Amaranth Deputy Mayor Walter Kolodziechuk outlined the erosion of the area’s health-care services since 1992.

It is an indisputable fact that Shelburne was better served by doctors prior to the 1992 merger of the Shelburne and Orangeville hospitals and the closing of Shelburne’s Emergency services.

It has been frequently pointed out that doctors tend to opt for Orangeville over Shelburne only because hospital services are concentrated there. But it was only last week that Mr. Kolodziechuk publicly drew a direct relationship between the loss of the hospital’s Emergency and Obstetrics services and the lack of doctors in Shelburne.

We fail to see how establishing a Health and Wellness Centre to provide urgent care, even on a 24/7 basis, would solve the problem of physician shortage at Shelburne, but we’ll hear more about that in June.

Meanwhile, a Markdale hospital nurse has disclosed that that hospital’s Emergency department is facing closure, leaving no such services anywhere between Orangeville and Owen Sound, a distance of more than 100 kilometres.