MD Placement a Big Concern As End Nears for 2 Ottawa Hospitals

Docket: 1-5501 Initial: JN Customer: CMAJ Apr 21/98 15501 April 21/98 CMAJ /Page 1004 Nouvelles et analyses medical faculty at UBC. ICBC is to just 65. They concluded that tradi- sures can actually “make things providing the funding. tional treatments had to change: ac- worse,” says Dr. Stephen Barron, The Quebec researchers reviewed tive exercise is now recommended cochair of the BC initiative. Diagno- the literature on whiplash and even- over passive measures like rest and sis has long presented a challenge, tually whittled 65 000 articles down the use of collars. Those passive mea- and most physicians are “very frus- MD placement a big concern as end nears for 2 Ottawa hospitals Come next year, Ottawa’s lineup of “Not all of this has been worked out it’s not scheduled to close until Sept. hospitals is going to be a lot shorter. by any means at this stage, and that’s 30, 1999, the Grace seems further Two city hospitals — the Riverside where the work of the medical fact ahead in knowing what will happen and the Salvation Army Grace — finder will partially come into play.” to some of its physicians. are being closed as part of Ontario’s Earlier this year, the HSRC re- The hospital’s chief of obstetrics health services restructuring exer- leased a discussion paper on medical and gynecology, Dr. Seema Johri, cise. The Ottawa region’s reconfig- human resources issues. The paper will assume that position at the ured delivery system is intended to Queensway-Carleton Hospital save $128.9 million annually. when the responsibility for obstet- Dr. Duncan Sinclair, chair of the rics is transferred there from the Toronto-based Health Services Re- Grace next year. “Obstetrics is a structuring Commission (HSRC), new program for them so they had says his group’s goal is to ensure to create the new position,” explains “that physicians are treated fairly Robinson, who anticipates that all and equitably in attaining privi- the Grace’s obstetricians and pedia- leges and access to resources in a tricians will gain privileges at the restructured system.” Queensway-Carleton. That turn of The president of the medical staff events is welcomed by Robinson at the Riverside isn’t so sure. Dr. and his staff, who are still “unhappy Chris Fleming, who runs his own with the way things worked out.” family practice in Ottawa, says the The medical team at the River- 150 physicians associated with the side, meanwhile, has little cause to 200-bed hospital are playing the celebrate. Fleming suggests that “waiting game” over their futures. restructuring has been nothing “Many of the surgeons and internists more than a political exercise. “We are wondering what happens during Major Malcolm Robinson: “unhappy recently received a 4-year accredi- the transition period when we be- with the way things worked out” tation for efficiency, but the gov- come the Riverside site of the new ernment decided it was going to Ottawa Hospital,” says Fleming. was prepared by a group chaired by close 30 medium-sized hospitals in He thinks the “massive chaos and Dr. John Atkinson, a former chief of Ontario and they decided to close confusion” inherent in the restructur- staff at the Ottawa Civic Hospital, us,” he says. “We’re easier to close ing exercise have fuelled the fires of and recommended that all hospitals than the Civic or the General be- uncertainty and left many of River- form a transitional medical human cause they are bigger than we are.” side’s physicians “paranoid.” Its emer- resources team that would develop To add insult to injury, the River- gency room is set to close Nov. 30 “physician-adjustment policies” side will lose its CT scanner at the and the entire site is to cease opera- during restructuring. end of June, when it is to be trans- tion as a separate hospital at year’s end. Amalgamation of the Riverside ferred to the Queensway-Carleton The future for the 120 physicians and the Grace was scheduled for the — 6 months before the Riverside is affiliated with the Grace is equally end of March, at which time the scheduled to close. “We can’t func- uncertain, says hospital president and Board of Directors of the new Ot- tion as an up-to-date hospital doing CEO Major Malcolm Robinson; the tawa Hospital (which also combines various types of care if the CT scan- hospital had been providing acute the Civic and the General hospitals) ner goes,” Fleming complains. — care to Ottawa patients for 94 years. will decide on staffing issues. While © Christopher Guly 1004 JAMC • 21 AVR. 1998; 158 (8).

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