Ken White, former CEO at Trillium Health Centre in Mississauga, will at least spend the next six to nine months, coming up with an action plan to improve communication between the hospital and the community, ensure proper staffing and reduce wait times in the emergency ward.
Amid reports that a patient had the wrong leg operated on at Brampton Civic, Ontario's first public-private hospital, Health Minister George Smitherman has named the supervisor who will look into problems at the new facility.
"People in the community should expect more answers to the questions raised ... What we see here is evidence of the need to do better," Smitherman told a press conference at the Brampton site of the William Osler Health Centre yesterday.
Smitherman took the rare step of appointing a supervisor to restore public confidence in Brampton Civic after the deaths of Harnek Sidhu, 52, of pancreatitis and Amarjit Narwal, 42, of a stroke, sparked a huge community protest in early December.
Then, on Christmas Day, 72-year-old Amar Kaur Brar complained doctors cut open her right leg by mistake when she went to hospital for surgery on her fractured left leg.
Although he had been an investigator at Brampton Civic for about a year, helping it to ramp up to its opening on October 28th, White said he was "not at all familiar" with concerns raised by the community about a shortage of staff, unduly long waits in emergency and a lack of beds.
"It's very sad there's all kinds of these misadventures in health care happening across Canada," White told reporters in an interview after the press conference.
Smitherman blamed "mischief makers" and alluded to persistent negative media reports about problems at the hospital since it opened as being a factor in attracting staff to work at the centre.
Some of those reports have been "pretty far off the mark," he said.
Brampton Civic, which replaced Peel Memorial Hospital, "overnight gained 100 beds, which is unheard of in health care" today, said Smitherman.
However, he did acknowledge staffing challenges.
Source: The Star
This is a video from CBC News concerning the appointment of Ken White
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