I’ve lived in this town almost my whole life. I wanted to share a quick story with you. One summer in the early 2000s, my mother fell down and broke her leg.
My father quickly rushed her to the emergency room where she was greeted by nurses and a doctor. While the doctor was examining the break, a nurse came in and said to the doctor that he was needed with another patient immediately. My mother, shocked and in pain, cried out “What do you mean he’s needed in another room? I’ve got a broken leg here!” The nurse responded “Yes ma’am, but we’ve just had a three-year-old girl come in who’s just survived an encounter with a bear; she needs the doctor more than you.”
This is how I learned what triage meant. Mom’s leg could wait, and she knew it.
I’ve been thinking about this moment a lot over the past few weeks. If I fall down and hurt myself, maybe break a leg – would the ambulance turn around mid-journey if there was a three year old in critical condition after surviving a bear attack? How exactly would my conscience feel if I know the first ambulance is out of town already, and because of my clumsiness, that no one else in town will have lifesaving support should they need it until one of the ambulances comes back?
Now I’m left thinking “could this broken leg wait until Monday morning?”
That’s not right. I shouldn’t be faced with this moral dilemma! No one in Canada should! We pay for this service. It’s inexcusable that we face such a reduction in health care quality while fronting the same bill.
Speaking of fronting the bill, let’s talk about that a little. I used AI to help me do some homework here, so if I’m wrong, maybe Northern Health wants to reach out and correct me.
Northern Health’s board of directors? In the last three years they’ve increased their Director Retainers by over 70 percent and their meeting fees by 40 percent. This has led to CEO Ciro Panessa going from making 350k in 2023 to 450k in 2024! That’s a 30 percent pay raise. When was the last time you heard of someone getting a 30 percent pay raise in one year? Did the value of their work increase 30 percent? Are they truly performing that much better as a company? Seems to me that divergences have been on a steep incline in that same timeline. I think raises in pay like that should reflect strong performance, but that is not what we’ve been seeing.
I think this whole closure is a game being played by Northern Health to lower their divergence numbers. Can’t say our clinic is on divergence if its closed! Sounds like a certain CEO is trying to justify another pay raise. “Look look! Our divergence numbers are down!”
What they are failing to realize is that this is not a numbers game to us. This isn’t a game at all! These are our lives they are playing with! Restore our clinics full time emergency hours today, and give us what we’re paying for!
