Tag Archives: St. Thomas-Elgin General Hospital

04.20.13
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Filling vacant seat will be a true test of this council

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When city council next gathers at city hall on May 6, the seat previously occupied by Sam Yusuf will officially be declared vacant. Council will then have 60 days, under the Ontario Municipal Act, to appoint a new alderman.
It’s an undertaking that has been dealt with several times in the past decade or so, however T-J reporter and People columnist Eric Bunnell reminds us of the fascinating parallel he wrote about in April, 2000.
Helen Cole had announced her resignation and council met behind closed doors to unanimously agree Jeff Kohler should fill the vacancy.
He was the third runner-up in the 1997 municipal vote, however the top vote-getter of the also-rans, Terry Shackelton, had already moved on to council and the next individual in line, former alderman Hugh Shields, declined the appointment.
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04.15.13
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An Open Letter to the St. Thomas-Elgin General Hospital Board of Governors Regarding the Outsourcing of Medical Transcription

The following letter is from Stratford-area health care advocate Frances Simone regarding the hospital’s decision to out-source its medical transcription services. She has also created a petition urging the hospital to re-consider the decision . . .

On May 22, 2013, STEGH plans to lay off all of its in-house Medical Transcriptionists and outsource their jobs to Accentus. STEGH is making a poor decision that will harm staff and put patient care at risk.

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I have contacted Mr. Paul Collins, CEO to discuss this matter and have received no response. As a result, this letter is directed to the Board of Governors and the community of St. Thomas.

The community of St. Thomas deserves to know the facts rather than the public relations spin. Accentus is not an Ottawa company, it was owned by New York based High Road Capital Partners, a private equity firm, and BMO Capital Corporation since 2009. In a merger and acquisition deal closing in November 2012, Accentus was sold to Nuance Communications. Nuance Communications is a multinational corporation headquartered in Massachusetts, whose CEO earned $37,077,679 million total calculated compensation in 2012.
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04.13.13
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Something fishy about the police headquarters vote

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Just call them the king and queen of the flip-flop. We’re talking, of course, about Ald. Lori Baldwin-Sands and Ald. Mark Cosens and which way they will lean Monday night when city council votes on the latter’s motion dealing with a new police headquarters.
Last week, Cosens filed a notice of motion that the city “build a new, modern, state-of-the-art police facility” adjacent to the Timken Centre.
The wording of the motion is a flip-flop-flip for Cosens.
We’ll elaborate.
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04.09.13
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The new reality when STEGH outsources transcription services

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“We’re in financial devastation.”

That’s the stark assessment of a medical records transcriptionist who, last year, lost her job at a London hospital when it was out-sourced to Ottawa-based Accentus.

It’s the same firm hired by St. Thomas-Elgin General Hospital to handle its transcription services, resulting in the loss of four full-time and an equal number of part-time jobs effective May 22.

With 12 years medical records experience in various capacities, the London transcriptionist, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, has been an independent contractor for Accentus since last November, when nearly 50 transcribing jobs were axed at two hospitals.

She works out of home, earns about $400 every two weeks and receives no benefits or sick time.
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04.06.13
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I’m sorry, your patient care has been out-sourced

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It’s an atmosphere that has been described as poisonous. A department where the director is accused of harassing, bullying and belittling a long-time employee who, as a result, is now absent from the workplace on stress leave.
A situation where an individual charged with the financial welfare of a $110 million corporation is in flagrant and repeated violation of that organization’s respect in the workplace policy
What is shocking is the venue – the treasury department at city hall – and the actions of city treasurer Bill Day have put CAO Wendell Graves and human resources director Graham Dart between a rock and a hard place.
And, no matter what action they deem necessary, it could cost St. Thomas ratepayers dearly.
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03.30.13
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Just how thorough was that background check?

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St. Thomas-Elgin General Hospital CEO Paul Collins checked in with us via email this week to offer insight into the hiring of vice-president of corporate services Malcolm Hopkins.
If you recall, Hopkins confirmed with this corner he was employed by The Kerkhoff Group, a B.C. construction, property development and building products manufacturing group of companies that went “spectacularly bankrupt around 1994” – his description of the meltdown.
In the aftermath, Hopkins was ordered to pay $10,000 and was issued with a five-year director/officer ban with conditions in 1997 by the British Columbia Securities Commission.
Our question: four years after this disciplinary action, what was the process that led to the hiring of Hopkins at STEGH?
Collins passed along the following summary.
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03.25.13
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STEGH provides insight into chief of staff salary, VP details ‘exciting stuff’

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Ten days ago – as reported last week in this space – we contacted Cathy Fox, communications and public relations specialist at St. Thomas-Elgin General Hospital, seeking answers to the following questions.
Why doesn’t vice-president/chief of staff Nancy Whitmore’s salary appear on annual public sector salary disclosures?
And, prior his arrival at STEGH, did vice-president of corporate services Malcolm Hopkins work outside of health care in British Columbia?
We received the following detailed answer to the first query directly from hospital CEO Paul Collins.
“In 2008, STEGH undertook a recruitment process to replace the previous physician in the role of VP Medical Affairs/Chief of Staff. The successful candidate was Dr. Nancy Whitmore, the first from outside of STEGH. Dr. Whitmore had been a practicing obstetrician/gynecologist in St. Thomas in the early 1990’s before relocating to Stratford.”
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03.16.13
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Hospital junkets open up wider health care debate

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Leading the way toward a lean, efficient and effective operating program versus ripping taxpayers off with over-valued, over-billed opinions of what’s good for the hospital.
That’s the debate that has raged on the Times-Journal website and Facebook page in the aftermath of our revelation last week of the overseas jaunt to Singapore by four St. Thomas-Elgin General Hospital executives.
In the week since, we’ve learned of other trips to the U.K. and Wisconsin and rumors of possible convention junkets to Florida and Las Vegas that are now being checked.
News of the fact-finding mission to Birmingham, Bristol and Leeds in the U.K. by CEO Paul Collins and chief of staff Nancy Whitmore comes on the heels of a revealing T-J editorial penned by John Robson entitled, “To see the future of Canadian health care, look to the U.K.”
Robson paints a picture of a health care system in shambles with the collapse of the National Health Service on which ours is modelled.
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03.09.13
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It’s more of the same-old, same-old over at STEGH

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The hospital’s newest vice-president wins this week’s award for stating the obvious when she proclaimed, “We’re on the right track here, for sure, in seeing the success that you can have when you continue to to keep the patient at the centre of everything that you do.”
It’s that kind of bafflegab logic from top executives at St. Thomas-Elgin General Hospital, like Karen Davies quoted above, that is being raised up the flagpole to justify sending four individuals 15,000 km to Singapore to get a glimpse at how their healthcare system operates.
When questioned by T-J reporter Nick Lypaczewski this week, patient-centered care was incorporated into as many answers as possible.
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