NEWS:

Winchester - Today, Nepean-Carleton MPP Lisa MacLeod was joined by Deputy PC Leader and Opposition Health Critic Christine Elliott to support her constituents who want to stop emergency room services cuts at the Winchester District Memorial Hospital mandated by the Champlain LHIN, and launched a petition campaign to say to the Champlain LHIN "Hands off our ER".

The Winchester Memorial District Hospital (WDMH) has launched an online survey for the future of the hospital, which includes the potential closing of the emergency room in the evening. Today is the last day Eastern Ontario patients in rural Ottawa and in Winchester can tell the WDMH and the Champlain LHIN: "Hands off our ER". 

The possible closure of the evening emergency room in Winchester is the human cost of Dalton McGuinty's poor planning.  For months now the Ontario PC Caucus has warned that Dalton McGuinty's failure to take the control he promised over wages would mean the cost of running hospitals would go up and there would be a direct cost to the healthcare system.  The LHIN is telling residents something has to go because of McGuinty's failure and now they are forced to pick among a selection of services- including the closing of the evening ER.

QUOTES:

"Ontario emergency rooms are vital services to Ontario families.  By cutting ER service, even in the evenings, rural residents in Eastern Ontario will be deprived of key services and cause them to travel further and wait longer to see a doctor or get other medical procedures.  In short, it means less access to frontline healthcare services and potential safety concerns."

- Ontario PC MPP Christine Elliott and PC Health Critic

"As the MPP for Nepean-Carleton and the representative for those patients in Edwards, Vernon, Osgoode and Metcalfe I am disappointed the LHIN has forced these healthcare decisions on my community. I want to assure my constituents I will defend them and that I will fight to keep the ER open."

- Ontario PC MPP Lisa MacLeod

QUICK FACTS:

• To date, Dalton McGuinty's 14 regional LHIN bureaucracies have diverted $250 million in healthcare spending away from frontline care, handed out $7 million in untendered healthcare contracts, and wasted $250 million on an Aging at Home strategy that failed province-wide to reduce long-term care and alternate-level-of-care wait times.

• In 2009, the Auditor General revealed that the McGuinty Liberals had wasted $1 billion on the eHealth boondoggle.