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North Island P3 Victory!

Hospital board rejects VIHA's plan for a North Island regional hospital

Thanks in part to the efforts of a local coalition, Citizens for Quality Health Care, the Comox Strathcona Regional Hospital District board rejected the Vancouver Island Health Authority's plan for a regional hospital on the North Island by a vote of 14 to six on February 7.

 Health care activists lobbied civic politicians, hospital board representatives and MLAs, organized public forums and petitions, and made presentations at health authority board meetings since VIHA first floated its regional hospital scheme over two years ago.

Citizens for Quality Health Care worked with North Island health care workers, including nurses and physicians, to promote a previous recommendation that VIHA upgrade St. Joseph's and CRGH.

The regional hospital, projected to cost $300 million, would likely have been a public-private partnership (P3). Its location was to be in the remote and undeveloped area of Dove Creek in the Comox Valley. The hospital board had voted to support the project in September 2006, but rescinded the motion in the February 7 vote. The regional hospital board also wants VIHA to upgrade and expand Campbell River General and St. Joseph's "as soon as possible" and the board says that the provincial government should pay for the much-needed improvements with the $180 million it would have spent on a regional facility.

The Citizens for Quality Health Care formed to ensure that the public's voice would be heard. The group organized several town hall meetings in the two communities and each one drew hundreds of people and significant media coverage. Their petitions in support of upgrading and expanding Campbell River General and St. Joseph's garnered nearly 19,000 signatures and were presented in the legislature.

This is a significant victory but the battle is far from over.  The Vancouver Island Health Authority and Minister of Health George Abbott are already working behind the scenes making plans to refloat the regional hospital concept.

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