OrilliaMatters welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected] or via our website. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to an article regarding proposed changes to Orillia Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital memberships, published Dec. 20.
As OrilliaMatters reported on Dec. 17 and as was described during Orillia Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital’s (OSMH) Fireside Chat Dec. 19, the OSMH board of directors is proposing to eliminate the current paid community corporate membership governance model and replace it with one where the self-appointed board of directors would be the only corporate members.
During the Fireside Chat, the OSMH CEO argued that the original rationale for having paid community corporate members is outdated. His argument is that, in 1909, the Orillia hospital adopted corporate memberships as a way of funding our hospital. In 1909, there was no universal health care in Canada and each community was responsible for funding its hospital.
I suggest that OSMH and the Orillia and area communities are facing a massive hospital challenge, even greater than the challenge the hospital faced in 1909. The CEO acknowledged, during the Fireside Chat, that the cost of a new hospital will be $1 billion. The community share will be between $200 million and $250 million over the next 30 years. That means you and I will be asked to pay that $200 million to $250 million directly through donations or indirectly through our municipal taxes. This is an almost insurmountable challenge.
Rather than alienating current corporate members by eliminating them, maybe the OSMH board of directors should mount a campaign to vastly expand the paid corporate membership. Just imagine the benefits to OSMH if 8,000 to 10,000 memberships are sold. That would amount to about 10 per cent of the population served by OSMH.
With that number of corporate members, the OSMH board of directors would be able to unequivocally demonstrate to the province our community’s support for OSMH and its plans for a new hospital.
With that number of corporate members, OSMH would have a huge talent pool from which to select a skills-based board of directors.
With that number of corporate members, the OSMH Foundation would have a huge number of engaged individuals from whom it could solicit donations when a new hospital capital fundraising campaign is launched.
With that number of corporate members, the CEO’s fear that the corporate members could elect a board of directors representing a special interest group becomes impractical, if not impossible.
The CEO is correct that the current corporate membership fees are not affordable for some in our community. Rather than eliminating the corporate memberships, the board of directors should propose ways of obtaining memberships that are not so onerous.
Now is a time when OSMH needs to build engagement, not disengage over 300 individuals who, by purchasing corporate memberships, have demonstrated their commitment and support for our hospital.
Ted Emond
Former Orillia mayor, councillor and OSMH director
Orillia
