Hospitals as a health care hub VERSUS Paring down to core services

Cornwall Community Hospital has come out with a new, draft five year plan. The plan calls for a focus on "core services". It states:

CCH has identified the need to move to a more coordinated and strategic approach to determining the breadth and scope of clinical services based on community need, available resources, capacity and talent. CCH can not provide all services to all people and recognizes the need to employ evidence based best practices in its core service areas.

This certainly fits with the McGuinty government's focus on shrinking the role of public hospitals.

The plan also, however, raises the idea of the hospital focusing on health and health care "versus being just a hospital".

This is perhaps the main tension for smaller hospitals: see their services paired back to a smaller and smaller list of 'core services' or become a hub for a range of health care services in their local community.

The former tendency is certainly gaining more strength, but the latter surely makes more sense for smaller towns and cities struggling to attract health care providers and economic activity to their local communities.

dallan@cupe.ca

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