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November 7, 2013 | 72 pages
Unions set up hotline to collect personal stories By DESMOND DEVOY desmond.devoy@metroland.com
Shelley Sh ll Carter-Rose C R isi leaving l i AlAl gonquin College’s Perth campus. — Page P1
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Photo by LAURIE WEIR
Slipping away Sports - The St. John Catholic High School Spartans junior football team lost the LCIAA championship game to the Almonte Thunderbolts on Friday, Nov. 1 at home, 21-14. It was the team’s one and only loss of the season. See inside for more.
Blue Wings host fundraiser for injured Shawville player By STAFF
Sports – The Perth Jr. B Blue Wings will be holding a fundraiser for Shawville Pontiacs player, Brett Nugent, who was injured in a game here last month that sent him to hospital via ambulance.
The PDCI Blue Devils are LCIAA champs after big win at SFDCI. — Page P16
Nugent’s prognosis was not made known to this newspaper, but the owner of the Perth Blue Wings said the team will be holding this fundraiser for the Shawville player on Nov. 15,
during their home game against the Ottawa Jr. Canadians at 7:30 p.m. A logo has been made for Nugent, (red in colour, with his number 15 and a ‘thumb’s up graphic) with 100 per cent of gate admission donations given to the fundraising total. Pay whatever admission you wish – $5, $10, $20, $100 – 100 per cent of the 50/50 will also be given to the fundraising total, noted Christine Lyon, director, corporate sales and marketing
with the team. McLean Insurance Protection Team Perth will match dollar for dollar all monies raised. Special T-shirts for Nugent will be available at the game. For fans who can’t make the game but want to donate, visit www.FillTheRinkforBrett.com. The website will be set up this week and people can also watch the Blue Wings website www. perthbluewings.com for details as more becomes available.
News – Got a story to tell about your experiences with the Perth and Smiths Falls District Hospital? Well, operators are standing by. Whether your experiences with either campus of the hospital were good, bad, or even indifferent, the new hotline – at 888-599-0770 – sponsored by the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU) and the Canadian Union of Public Employees, went live this week. “This (number) is just for Perth and Smiths Falls, and area,” said OCHU President Michael Hurley, during a press conference at the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 95 in Smiths Falls on Monday, Nov. 4. While the unions which represent hospital workers in the area – including OPSEU, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union – have heard anecdotal evidence of how cutbacks are affecting services at the hospital from their members, Hurley wants to hear from the community at large, to get a wider picture of what is going on. “The budget process for the hospital is coming up at the end of March and we believe that the consequences of the cutbacks have been redirecting people for treatment to other facilities,” he charged. “(But) that’s our belief. We don’t know that…We hope to get some input from people who have had to access health care in Smiths Falls or Perth, so we can have a discussion about that. We can use that information to pressure the funder at Queen’s Park.” Information can be left anonymously, or you can elect to leave details, but Hurley stressed that “nobody’s experience will be divulged with attribution, unless they want to be.” He also promised that residents phoning the Toronto-based phone line would receive follow-up phone calls from the union group after their initial call to help form a “coherent narrative,” to their story. The hotline may also have the side-benefit of being a cathartic way for former patients and their
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families to talk through their experiences. “People are upset and they want to talk to someone,” said Hurley. “We will take the time to talk to them.” Callers have until the end of January to ring up the service, after which the information will be gathered and compiled into a report, though “how extensive it is depends on how much feed-back we have.” Personal stories may make up the dramatic thrust of the report, but Hurley promised that there would also be “some information context around the stories to give it meaning.” A copy of the report would be made available to Linda Bisonette, the president and chief administrative officer of the hospital, as well as Deb Matthews, the Minister of Health and LongTerm Care. Funding freeze The year 2014 will mark the third year of a five-year funding freeze that will expire on Dec. 31, 2017. According to Hurley, hospitals across the province are facing rising costs of about 5.8 per cent per year thanks to rising doctors’ pay, drugs, and technology costs. “This puts hospital inflation ahead of consumer inflation,” which is around three per cent. “We expect this to get considerably more difficult going forward.” The group continued to warn that “the policy of the provincial government is to downsize smaller hospitals,” and to centralize operations to larger hospitals in urban areas. He pointed to the Carleton Place and District Memorial Hospital which has been waiting a long time for its redevelopment plans to get the green light from Queen’s Park. “The government does not agree with the scope of the services they intend to deliver (in Carleton Place),” Hurley said. A+ rating Earlier this year, the hospital received an A+ rating from an online Fifth Estate poll, which found the facility to be the best hospital of its size in the country.
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