IN  THE  NEWS   

         Articles featured below are courtesy of Haliburton County newspapers

              Haliburton Echo, County Voice, Minden Times

 

 

Questions and Answers - an Interview

with Paul Rosebush   

(Haliburton Echo, week of October 13)

  

 

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Evacuation Exercises

 
 

                                                      By Chad Ingram                 October 21, 2009

 Residents of Hyland Crest were evacuated from the facility during a fire alarm last week.

Well, sort of.

Some 30 residents of the care facility’s lower lever were evacuated into a hallway at the Minden site of Haliburton Highlands Health Services during an emergency evacuation exercise on the morning of October 16.

The drill is an annual one conducted by HHHS to ensure that Hyland Crest staff members are well prepared in what to do in case of an emergency at the facility.

“We place such a high value on our residents’ lives,” said HHHS CEO Paul Rosebush, explaining why the yearly exercise is such an important one.

Since many of the facility’s residents have mobility issues, an evacuation requires that staff members be able to work diligently and quickly in an emergency.

Before the exercise last week, Rosebush got on an intercom at the HHHS facility to inform workers and patients in other areas of the building that the alarm was for drill purposes only and would affect only the lower level of Hyland Crest.

The drill included the detonation of a smoke bomb in one of the facility’s residential rooms. To keep staff on their toes, Rosebush explained that employees were kept unaware of where in the facility the phony fire would take place.

Once the alarm was raised, staff members sprang into action, breaking out emergency kits with fluorescent vests and quickly gathering the residents in the facility’s main room, and taking an inventory before marching them out of the facility.

Rosebush said the facility’s first wing was evacuated in six minutes, the second in nine minutes.

“That’s a very good response,” he said.

He said the exercise got a positive review from Minden fire chief Doug Schell, who took part in the exercise.

“The feedback was that it was an excellent and well-executed scenario,” Rosebush said. In the event of an actual emergency at Hyland Crest, he said first responders would be joining staff at the facility within about five-and-a-half minutes.

Rosebush is hoping to stage a larger evacuation drill incorporating other departments from the HHHS facility in the spring.

 

 

 HHHS CEO,

Paul Rosebush, addressed the public's concerns about the LHIN report at a meeting

in March.

 Small hospitals

 must find a way

 to fit into the big region 

Posted By Jenn Watt, Courtesy Haliburton Echo 

A doctor and a midwife working together could be enough to save the obstetrics bed at Haliburton Hospital, but then again, it might not be.  There are legal hurdles to overcome and ultimately it’s up to the Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) to make the call.

“I believe in personal choice [of mothers], but the challenge as an administrator is sometimes the lawyer tells us we can’t do things,” said Haliburton Highlands Hospital Services CEO Paul Rosebush.

Rosebush answered the public’s questions March 9 about the new clinical services plan that recommends closing the only obstetrics bed in the county.  He went over the plan, a report of an advisory committee of the LHIN, and the ramifications for this area if all the recommendations are implemented.

“I’d love to give you [services] close to home … but we’re a small hospital in a big hospital system,” he said.  The concept of the plan is “one acute care network” that will provide all of the essential services within the Central East LHIN, which stretches from Haliburton County in the north to Scarborough in the southwest corner. That means many services that were previously unavailable to those in this LHIN would be available at centres of excellence, mostly located in large southern hospitals.

The one recommendation that touched this hospital was closing the bed used about 10 times a year for births. The advisory committee said it was uncomfortable with the idea of only one doctor providing obstetrical services, saying the risk was too high for the provision of services close to home.   After the plan was released, Dr. Norm Bottum, who performs obstetrical services, has said he may leave the community if he is no longer allowed to provide elective births. There has also been protests from the local midwife, Rebecca Weeks-Toth, who said she was approved for this area by the Ministry of Health based on the fact there was a doctor doing obstetrics at the Haliburton Hospital.

At the public meeting, Weeks-Toth asked Rosebush whether there was a list of references for the plan and what evidence was used to prove that risks were too high here to keep the service.  Rosebush said there were some references, but the recommendations were based on the numbers of births to the numbers of qualified medical staff and not much else.

 

 pregrant woman who One pregnant woman who attended said she was concerned that she wouldn’t be able to make it all the way to Peterborough to deliver her baby if the obstetrical bed was closed. “I’d rather have my baby locally with basic necessities rather than drive an hour and a half for … care,” she said.  “It’s not just maternity,” Rosebush said. “People are up and down that road [Highway 35] like crazy.”

Another woman said that last time she had a baby she drove back and forth to the city so much it ended up costing upwards of $2,000 for meals and transportation. Of that, she received $300 back from the government. This cost is borne by the patient, not the system.   Rosebush said that was an issue that isn’t taken enough into account by the system.

Others at the meeting asked questions about services in the LHIN – whether doctors would be lost, whether the bed would be lost, whether they could still go to Toronto for services.   Rosebush said that if services were outside of the LHIN people can still go there for care and that no doctors or beds will be lost. At least, not yet.   “If we’re seeing trends, we’re seeing people moving to economies of scale,” Rosebush said.    “I look at this as phase one,” he said.

There is a second clinical services plan in the works, and will begin examining another aspect of hospital services tentatively starting in November of this year. As for what it will focus on, Rosebush isn’t sure.

 

 Haliburton Highlands Health Services

     Receives a Lift

 

The Haliburton Highlands Health Services Foundation’s "Reach For the Future" campaign is well on its way to reaching its goal of $361,000 for 70 new stationary ceiling lifts for all beds in Haliburton and Minden. HHHS CEO Paul Rosebush was a good sport and demonstrates the chair’s usefulness as he received a cheque for $31,000 from campaign co-chair Don Popple, RPN Joan Sawyer, RN representative April Decarlo, HHHS acute care manager Debbie Watson, RPN Shelley VanLieshout, Foundation chair Peter Oyler, and HHHS Foundation executive director Dale Walker.

The money has been raised from the Foundation’s fundraising efforts including last year’s Moose FM Radiothon, the Minden Lions Motorcycle Poker Ride, and other gracious donations from community members and businesses.

Article ID# 1521495, April 2009        Posted By MATT JAMES, Courtesy Haliburton Echo