Our health is not good, but can LHIN do something about it?

by Jeff Green

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The South Eastern Ontario Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) Draft Integrated Health Service Plan was released earlier his month, and it contains some startling information about the relative health of people in Eastern Ontario as compared to the rest of the province.

The southeast LHIN, which encompasses Hastings , Frontenac, Leeds and Grenville and Lanark Counties , and is centred around the City of Kingston , has the lowest population density of any LHIN in southern Ontario . It has the “highest percentage of the population aged 65 years and older of any LHIN in the province,” the draft plan says,  and “the population of the southeast LHIN has a serious burden of illness”, with higher than provincial averages rates of arthritis/rheumatism, high blood pressure, asthma, diabetes, heart disease, and chronic bronchitis.  The rheumatism/arthritis and heart disease rates are the highest in the province.

The southeast LHIN is in the upper quartile of age standardised morality rates for: circulatory disease, neoplasms, respiratory system disease, external causes of mortality (eg. accidents), endocrine, nutritional and metabolic diseases.

“Also, the life expectancy at birth for the population of the SE LHIN is in the lowest quartile in the province.”

This is not good news.

In contrast to the stark nature of the information about the health of the Southeast LHIN , the draft plan is not as clear on how to rectify the situation

Much of the document is full of vague directives, such as talk that “the LHIN will work with providers to improve wait times for services” and “The LHIN will further investigate, develop plans and work with providers to reduce barriers to existing mental health services and addictions services and to increase the supply of these services across the region”

This vagueness in understandable, given the LHIN process. According to its director, Paul Huras, the LHIN will have responsibility for about $1 billion in annual spending on healthcare. Yet it will only have a staff of between 21 and 24 people, and will be overseeing a large number of healthcare providers - from small community service agencies that deliver rural services costing a few hundred thousand dollars a year, to the multimillion dollar budgets of Community Care Access Centres, to the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by Kingston General Hospital each year.

The Southeast LHIN has set out seven priorities for the next three years. They include: improving access to care; improving the availability of long-term care services; making the movement of patients between different health care organizations easier; developing better communication with aboriginal communities; improving access to services in French; moving ahead with electronic information systems; and developing a regional health human resources plan.

Further information about the draft plan is available at

http://www.lhins.on.ca/english/SouthEast/SouthEast.asp#5.

Comments regarding the draft plan can be addressed to Florence.Peretie@Lhins.on.ca