Cartwright concerned about care home

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This article was published 15/11/2017 (3136 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CARTWRIGHT — Residents in Cartwright expecting to learn about the viability of their personal care home and EMS station left a community meeting disappointed.

The task force recommending a major overhaul in the delivery of health care in Westman held court for more than an hour Tuesday afternoon with nearly 100 residents — without broaching the subject of the border town’s remaining health care services.

Rumours have been swirling for months the community’s 10-bed personal care home, the Davidson Memorial Health Centre, is slated for closure.

At the end of the meeting, consultant Gordon Daman acknowledged residents’ Cartwright-specific concerns could be shared in a questionnaire task force members would later read.

However, that wasn’t deemed sufficient by some. Afterwards, Carolyn Schram, who sits on a health group subcommittee the municipality recently started, told Daman residents were frustrated they never got to express their concerns.

The community’s worries are well-founded, explained Dustin Mymko, the local community development officer.

He sits on the task force and said, in those discussions, it sounded like the facility’s closure was unavoidable.

“It was kind of assumed that’s the way it was going to go.”

Mymko made clear the task force has not formally recommended a closure, but have neither laid out a plan to extend its life span.

He explained the task force is treating “as gospel” a 2015 report from Prairie Mountain Health, which stated the personal care home built in 1949 only had five “useful years” left.

Mymko said municipal council is questioning whether to endorse the wide-ranging health care overhaul plan next month, when it may be detrimental to their local interests.

“The way the recommendations are laid out, from my perspective, it leaves no medical services or health care services at all in the municipality,” he said. “We’ve already been told our ambulances are leaving (by the province) and then there’d be some implicit acceptance that the Davidson would be closing.”

Questioned on the shuttering of Cartwright’s personal care home, Daman said in an interview it’s out of their hands.

“If that is the decision of Shared Health Services Manitoba, (we ask) that time would be provided to backfill those services with assisted living and supportive housing,” he said. “If those services are in place then folks will still be able to be cared for.”

Daman added the task force respects that Prairie Mountain Health is best suited to know how many years are left in the life of their facilities.

Evident at the Centennial Auditorium in Cartwright Tuesday, residents have no appetite to lose any health-care services.

The community lost its hospital decades ago, and, in the last decade, a doctor, too, who practised downstairs in the personal care home.

In addition to the 10 beds at the PCH, which are occupied, services such as blood work, physiotherapy, a public health nurse running a baby clinic and a community bath program are offered.

Hearing of a possible closure worried Schram when she first heard it this summer.

She visited the Davidson often as her mother-in-law lived there before she died this September.

“It made me feel ill,” she said of the news, “that was her home.”

Residents are also worried Cartwright’s EMS station will be shuttered, which the province said would happen once trained full-time paramedics are in place to handle the workload at the remaining stations.

Schram, however, is confident the community can keep its first responders.

She said community support is present, with the municipality and Cartwright-Mather Health Auxillary donating money to the volunteers’ training.

John Penner, a first responder in Cartwright, said their ranks have almost doubled in recent weeks with three more people receiving their licensing. Cartwright now has seven working first responders, which suits them comfortably for the future.

Still, Penner’s worried their hard work will no longer be needed.

“As more and more gets pulled out of our community, it pulls the community apart.”

Schram said the loss of health care is worrying, since she finds the community of 300 people to have a lot of potential.

“It’s concerning because it’s not just Cartwright, it’s all small communities in our province,” she said. “Are we looking at the demise of these smaller communities? I don’t see that that’s really going to be beneficial to anybody.”

Of the numerous recommendations the nine-municipality task force has put forth, the most attention-grabbing proposal involves shutting down the four emergency departments in Killarney, Boissevain, Melita and Deloraine and converting them, initially, into urgent care centres, which would provide immediate help but not emergency care (resuscitation or trauma).

These proposals, presented for the first time Monday, are not firm. Daman told the audience in Cartwright he expects feedback, gleaned from the five community meetings, will alter the plan.

After a meeting was held in Killarney Tuesday evening, the task force will present its findings twice more. They will be at the Royal Canadian Legion in Melita on Nov. 20 from 7 p.m.-9 p.m. and the community hall in Boissevain on Nov. 21 from 7 p.m.-9 p.m.

If approved by municipal governments next month, the recommendations will be forwarded to the health department. Shared Health Services Manitoba, a provincial health organization to be formed next year, will evaluate the proposals.

Daman told The Brandon Sun it would likely take three to five years before any overhaul is fully rolled out.

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