Dear editor,
The two-hospital non-solution for the North Island cannot do the job.
Cannot provide acute-care services; emergency, surgical, ICU services that a 21st century $600,000,000 hospital should provide.
There are simply not enough specialist nurses, physicians and allied professionals on the North Island and/or the ongoing dollars to maintain dual services.
We waste countless hospital days and allow patients to languish waiting for "care" in their home hospital when the coverage and staffing are not available.
The two-hospital solution will perpetuate this problem. A regional hospital would solve that problem.
Hospitals are not needed to provide the vast majority of "health care services" 鈥� daycare, home care, polyclinics, extended care, family practice, outreach psychiatric mental health and addiction services are clearly the best practice.
Our $600,000,000 needs to be spent on a plan with services, not on bricks and mortar.
Dr. Phil Luke
Editor's note: Dr. Luke says his letter was written with the encouragement of his emergency medicine colleagues at St. Joseph's General Hospital in Comox.
