This article was first published by Sudbury.com, a Village Media publication.
Sudbury's Health Sciences North (HSN) has enjoyed many successes in the past year but there are still some serious challenges ahead, said hospital president and CEO David McNeil who took over running the hospital back in October.
McNeil replaced former CEO Dominic Giroux, who resigned last June to take a new position at Hôpital Montfort in Ottawa.
In his first ever annual report as hospital CEO, McNeil was brutally blunt. He said hallway health care is still an issue, citing record overcrowding, an inadequately sized emergency department, high staff turnover and a problematic payroll system as ongoing obstacles.
Still, McNeil said, the situation is gradually improving and he commented on what he said were some of the "remarkable achievements" at the hospital in the past year.
One of those was the opening of the new Acute and Reactivation Care Centre (ARCC) that created 52 new beds at the hospital along with a unique new model of care for looking after older adults.
McNeil said he was pleased that Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones made two visits to the hospital, firstly to witness the opening of the adult care centre and secondly to drop off $5 million to support early planning of HSN’s future capital expansion project for the next 30 years.
McNeil said the project is ambitious with a strong focus on mental health care, chronic care and children's care.
"The project scope for Phase One includes NEO Kids, acute and mental health, adult inpatient mental health and addiction beds, emergency department redevelopment with mental health and addiction space, adult acute inpatient beds, a focus on chronic and core diseases and risk factors impacting adults and children and alignment with ministry of health priorities."
McNeil said he anticipates more visits from health ministry officials in the coming months.
"We look forward to sharing more news about capital expansion during the next year," he said. As promising as that sounds, McNeil said HSN would still rely heavily on the "support" of patients, families, donors and the wider community to help pick up the cost of the expansion.
Storage Closets
In the meantime, McNeil said HSN still has to deal daily with some cold, hard realities.
"Our emergency department is too small for the patients we serve. Most mornings we have 28 patients waiting for a bed at seven o'clock before the day even starts," he said.
"This year we saw record high occupancy as we continue to deal with chronic overcrowding. In February, we saw a record 621 patients admitted in the hospital built for 441," he added.
"Hallway health care is a daily reality for our team, patients and families. In March of this year, we averaged 92 patients per day in unconventional bed spaces, like overflow units, tub rooms, storage closets, hallways, and other locations of care.”
Despite all that, McNeil said there were some beacons of light shining through the darkness. He said the hospital's notorious payroll system "has reached a fairly stable state." McNeil was referring to the fact that hundreds of the hospital's 4,000 employees have endured a failing computerized pay system over the past two years that sometimes paid employees too much or not at all.
He said the average number of payroll inquiries per pay-period averaged about 110 in 2023. That number is now down to 98 inquiries per pay-period in 2024.
"Effective May third 2024. We have completed reconciling 7,656 payroll inquiries from the original backlog of inquiries representing a 95.8-per-cent completion rate," said McNeil.
He said the cost of implementing the plan to solve that issue — My HSN — was estimated at $563,000 and has been included in the budget for the coming year.
Another in-house issue for the hospital is the staff retention rate. McNeil said there were significant gaps and challenges in health human resources. But he said gradual improvements were also happening.
"HSN recruited a total of 977 new employees during the last fiscal year while 512 left the organization. This means that 1.9 new employees (were hired) for every employee who left. This includes 230 registered nurses, registered practical nurses and nurse practitioners. These are just some of the important accomplishments that we celebrated this year, thanks to the hard work of our team," said McNeil.
"While we have made strides in hiring, our turnover rate is at 11.1 per cent. It's lower than last year and moving in the right direction, but we want to see this between five and eight per cent."
Sudbury.com will report more details on the annual general meeting and the health care projects underway at the hospital in the coming days.
Len Gillis covers health care as well as the mining industry for Sudbury.com.
