A Public Meeting to Address Some Issues at the Clinton Public Hospital Attracted over 100 People This Week
by Bob Montgomery
The public meeting was organized by retired Clinton Physician Doctor Maarten Bokhout and held at the Libro Hall in Clinton.
Doctor Bokhout stressed at the beginning of the meeting that the concerns were not about the quality of the services provided at the hospital, but about the availability of those services and specifically the availability of services in the Emergency Department. Doctor Bokhout says he organized the meeting to find out how Clinton residents felt about the situation at the hospital and the consensus was that the availability of ER service was the major concern.
There was also some discussion around how to deal with staffing issues at the hospital and he suggested that's a more complicated issue to deal with because there are so many factors involved. “The Emergency situation is, conceptually, a fairly simple problem to identify and the question is then how do you deal with it.” He says the position of the Huron Perth Healthcare Alliance has been that there aren't enough staff to do everything and unfortunately that's the way it is for the time being. “I also think there's an issue around how long do you allow this to carry on and what else can you do. And I'm not sure, up until now, there's been sufficient thought given to what other things can be done to improve the situation.”
Doctor Bokout says he believes, as a result of the public meeting, they now have the ability to come up with some ideas and present them to the HPHA and they have formed a group to do that. “The intent is to firmly work on expanding the hours of the Emergency Department as an initial step. And I think once we've highlighted those things and we come up with some of these suggestions, there will be some solutions to the staffing issues as well.”
Doctor Bokhout says if they can at least come up with some options to address the issues rather than just complain that the current situation is not acceptable, the HPHA will be obligated to at least respond to the suggestions put forward. And he's found there usually are solutions but it does require adapting to the situation at hand.
Doctor Bokhout says he's encouraged by this week's meeting that there is very definitely support for change at the Clinton Hospital so now they can move forward on how to go about that.
