The Penetanguishene site of the Georgian Bay General Hospital is closing, and the process to close the building starts immediately.
Every day Ken Gauthier goes to the Georgian Bay General Hospital to visit a friend. Today the hospital announced it will close the Penetanguishene site, and move everything over to the Midland location.
“I think it's one of the craziest moves that's ever been made for health purposes,” he says.
Not only is Gauthier upset his town is losing its hospital, he's worried about the 11 beds that will be closed as well. Those beds are primarily used for long-term and complex care patients, which means those patients and their families will have to travel further and wait longer for treatment.
“It will mean that people are waiting longer for complex continuing care,” says Karen McGrath, the CEO of the Georgian Bay hospital. She says the decision to close the site was a difficult one.
“We have been very reluctant to integrate services and as long as we could we wanted to keep services at both sites.”
But faced with a $1.7 million dollar deficit, McGrath says the province is forcing the hospital to cut costs. And closing the Penetanguishene site will save about $500,000 a year. The facility will not be shuttered immediately, but over the next three to five months, 36 of the 47 beds will be moved to Midland.
The dialysis unit and the hospital’s finance department will remain in Penetanguishene until next year, when they too will move to the Midland facility.
While jobs are not on the chopping block, Penetanguishene Mayor Gerry Marshal says the impact will be felt in two ways: economically and emotionally.
“People who work at the hospital shop and have lunch in Penetanguishene and they’ll be relocated so it's an economic loss,” he says, “but it's a heartfelt loss as well as it’s a piece that will be taken away.”
No layoffs are expected at this point, but the hospital says some employees will see their hours cut. In the meantime, the board is looking for a buyer to take over this site.
