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OPEN LETTER: Stop For-Profit Hospital Chain’s Expansion in Ontario UPDATE: Sale stopped, thanks for your help!
Posted: September 28, 2012
(September 28, 2012)
UPDATE: The purchase of the Shouldice Hospital by Centric Health a for-profit corporation with an ambitous expansion agenda has been stopped. A big thank you to all of you who sent letters into the Minister of Health to ask her to stop the deal.
The Ontario and Canadian Health Coalitions have teamed up with the Council of Canadians to stop Centric Health, a chain corporation with ambitious expansion plans, from expanding into Ontario. Centric Health is linked to Global Healthcare Investments and Solutions, a multinational giant private investment conglomerate. Several of its directors come from Netcare, another gargantuan multinational health privateer.
Centric Health is poised to buy the Shouldice Hospital, a private hernia hospital in Richmond Hill (just north of Toronto). Shouldice is a private family-created hospital that was “grand-parented” in prior to the creation of our public hospital system in Ontario. There are only a few private hospitals left, and the Private Hospitals Act was set up specifically to stop any further expansion of U.S.-style private for-profit hospitals in our province.
In order for the sale to go through, the agreement, struck between the Shouldice Hospital and Centric, requires the approval of the Minister of Health. The Minister has powers under the Private Hospitals Act to stop this sale. In fact, the Ontario government has the ability to pursue several different options that would result in the Shouldice operations being owned and operated as a non-profit/public hospital.
This is an issue that we can absolutely win. But we have to act right away. The Minister will make her decision by mid-October. Please send a quick note — it can be one line! — Just send it as soon as you can.
You can click onto the pre-written electronic letter by the Registered Nurses of Ontario and send it in by email right away. CLICK HERE
Please see our Open Letter to the Minister below: Please take from it, use it as a template, and distribute it widely! Please send your letters/emails/faxes asking the Minister to stop the sale to:
Hon. Deb Matthews, Minister of Health and Long-Term Care
10th Floor, Hepburn Block, 80 Grosvenor Street, Toronto, Ontario M7A 2C4
tel: 416-327-4300 fax:416-327-3679 email: dmatthews.mpp@liberal.ola.org
