Trouble in Health Care in Flin Flon - under the Norman Regional Health Authority (NRHA), and Why is the NRHA going after Dr. Krishnan Sethi?

On Wednesday December 1, I went to Flin Flon for a Community Meeting concerned about the state of health care in the region. The Calm Air plane was late and I arrived shortly after the meeting started in the R.H. Channing Auditorium. It was packed with about 400 people there. When I entered, Dennis Ballard, former Mayor of Flin Flon was expressing the anger and frustration that residents of Flin Flon are feeling.

The health care situation in Flin Flon has been a concern of residents for many months. The NDP have not been listening and the problems have gone from bad to worse and as the Flin Flon Reminder reported people in Flin Flon are furious. In short some of the major issues brought up by people at the meeting and to me afterwards are the following:

1) The moving of the medical clinic into the Flin Flon hospital. Based on a presentation to the Board of the NRHA which suggested that the move was necessary because it was a cheaper location even though in many respects it was less convenient. The existing clinic has easy parking access and is readily accessible for those with disabilities being on the ground floor. The clinic in the hospital is on the third floor and to get there people have to go through the Emergency Room waiting room, and have a winding route and need to go up an elevator which is heavily used. At the forum, information was presented that the cost of the clinic in the hospital was understated because revenues from fee for services were exaggerated and renovation costs used were less than the real costs. Meanwhile the costs used for the existing clinic were overstated. Residents of Flin Flon were left wondering if the move to the clinic in the hospital was in fact to a more expensive as well as a less convenient site, and some residents felt that the use of the existing clinic should be continued.

2) Concerns over the mismanagement by the NRHA in handling physicians and physician resources and specifically in the treatment of Dr. Krishnan Sethi
Dr. Sethi is revered by people in Flin Flon. He has been looking after people in the Flin Flon area for 30 years as a family physician who also provides obstetrics and anesthesia services. He is a remarkable doctor. In 2005, he was awarded recognition as the Family Physician of the Year for Manitoba. Two people came up to me after the forum to tell me how Dr. Sethi had saved their lives, and I have had more such stories in letters since. Dr.Sethi has stood up to the Norman Regional Health Authority administration and called for improved quality of care in the Flin Flon area. Perhaps in retaliation, the CEO of the Norman Regional Health Authority has moved to remove Dr.Sethi's hospital priviliges on what appear to be very weak grounds.

In my view, when you have a high quality physician working in your RHA you should be doing everything to work with him or her to get the best quality health care for people. Instead, in Flin Flon, where they have a physician who is a star (Dr. Sethi is to health care in Flin Flon what Wayne Gretsky is to hockey), he is being attacked. This is wrong, and only serves to undermine the system and the quality of health care. Why would young doctors go to work in Flin Flon when they see how distinguished doctors like Dr. Sethi are being treated? Indeed, I have heard of one doctor in training who wants to practice in rural Manitoba who said she would never go to Flin Flon when she heard of what is happening to Dr. Sethi. Why would the NRHA act to make recruitment of doctors to Flin Flon more difficult?

By the way, Dr. Sethi was honoured this past summer by people in Flin Flon for his community work when the Flin Flon Station Museum added his name to its Wall of Honour. For many years, Dr. Sethi has volunteered in the Museum's Teddy Bear Clinic. Dr. Sethi even gave the museum a teepee where the clinic is now held! At the Forum, there were many, many people who came to support Dr. Sethi.

3) Concerns over the quality of health care being provided in Flin Flon, especially in the Emergency Room. A number of speakers at the Forum raised their concern over misdiagnoses and other problems of poor care in Flin Flon at the present time. The Operational Review ordered by the Minister of Health needs to do an audit of the quality of care being provided in Flin Flon.

4) Intimidation: As reported in the Flin Flon Reminder, one woman at the Forum spoke of the Flin Flon General Hospital as a "place of high intimidation." She indicated staff are afraid to speak out for fear of losing their jobs. This also needs to be investigated as part of the Operational Review of the NRHA.

All of the above speak to the poor management and mismanagement by the NDP of health care in Manitoba. When added together with problems in the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and in the Burntwood Regional Health Authority in Thompson where the situation has reached the point where an investigative reporter has been banned from attending Board Meetings, it is not a pretty picture. Manitobans deserve much better stewardship of health care by their provincial government. The problem is that by being such poor managers, the NDP are undermining medicare in our province. We need to throw the NDP out of office and elect a Liberal government to preserve and enhance our medicare system in Manitoba.

A special thanks to Tom Heine for ably chairing the meeting.