10 years on, hospitals want more cash

Jeff Green | Jun 28, 2017

10 years ago Frontenac County made a commitment of $540,000 over ten years towards the re-development project at Kingston General Hospital and the Ontario Cancer Centre. Since then, a lot has changed in the operation of hospitals in Kingston.  Last week, Denise Cumming, Chief Executive Officer of the University Hospitals Foundation of Kingston, led a delegation to the monthly meeting of Frontenac County Council. The Foundation is the fundraising arm for the amalgamated Kingston hospitals.

Cumming talked about all of the improvements that came from Phase 1 of the redevelopment campaign, and then moved on to talk about Phase 2, which is getting underway. This phase, which is a $65 million campaign for which $52.5 million has been raised to date, will bring new operating rooms, new labs and a new emergency department, neonatal birthing suites and a new neonatal intensive care unit to Kingston General Hospital. At Hotel Dieu, it will be used to update the operating suites, the consolidated cardiology and the ophthalmology departments. Also planned is a redesign of the endoscopy centre, the children's outpatient centre and the diagnostic imaging suite. The pharmacy is also slated to be relocated. At Providence Care, fund raised dollars will be used for a number of equipment upgrades.

Cummings said “I am here to provide you with information about the success we have had in the  past thanks to the support of municipalities such as Frontenac County, and to talk about our current and future projects.”
But the pending request for a new commitment was on her mind as well, and that of members of council as well.

Cumming pointed out that 539 staff members at the Kingston Hospitals live in Frontenac County, there were almost 42,000 visits to Kingston hospitals in 2015, the most recent year for which such statistics are available, and that represents a 94.6% increase since 2006, the year when the last funding commitment from Frontenac County was made.

“You are going to be looking for more money from us, I expect” said Warden Ron Vandewal

Cumming said she would, but not until the fall. She said the request we will be for about $200,000 per year.

The City of Kingston has made a commitment of $1.3 million per year to the foundation.

Cumming said that the foundation is going to base its request to Frontenac County, which will be forthcoming in the early fall, on a formula that uses that $1.3 million commitment as a base. Since the ratio of visits to the hospitals from Frontenac County residents as compared to the amount of visits from residents of the City of Kingston is a ratio of about 1 to 6.5. The $200,000 requests therefore comes from dividing $1.3 million by about 6.5

Cumming then said, when interviewed after the meeting, that she is of course aware that  $200,000 per year request is much higher than the $54,000 that has been paid by county residents through property taxes for the last ten years, but added “we asked for $220,000 the last time, and the county council of the day decided on $54,000. The amount they donate is going to be up to them, but we thought the comparison with what Kingston City Council has committed is something to go on.”

Frontenac County will be entering into budget deliberations in October for the 2018 budget, at which time a request for funding support from the University Hospitals Foundation will certainly be on the table.