Patient care at risk in Vaughan hospital dispute, CEO says

Thestar.com
June 1, 2015
By Noor Javed

Patient care for residents in Vaughan and neighbouring communities could be at risk if an ongoing land dispute around the Vaughan hospital is not resolved immediately, says Altaf Stationawala, the president and CEO of Mackenzie Health, who is leading the hospital project.

The land dispute between the City of Vaughan, and a third party, the Vaughan Health Campus of Care (VHCC), has already bogged down the project for the past four years.

Stationwala says the negotiations must be resolved in coming weeks, or the hospital could be pushed beyond its 2019 completion target date.

“We are now at this critical point,” he said. “If this issue doesn’t get resolved imminently, then the hospital doesn’t go to market.”

With a population of more than 300,000 people, Vaughan is believed to be one of Canada’s largest cities without its own hospital. Residents currently rely on Etobicoke General in Toronto or Mackenzie Health in Richmond Hill if they need urgent care - a move that both residents and hospital officials say isn’t sustainable in the long term.

On Victoria Day, 330 people showed up to the Richmond Hill emergency room, said Stationwala. On an ordinary day, the department handles around 250 patients, he said.

“It was the busiest day of the year so far, and a challenging day for everyone in the emergency department,” he said. “But we are starting to have more days like the 330 days,” he said, adding that the department is equipped to handle 75,000-80,000 patients a year. Last year, they had 92,000 patients and expects to see that number rise year after year.

“We need this hospital. The faster the better,” he said. “And there should be nothing that gets in the way of that.”

The city’s hospital dreams began more than a decade ago, and the province officially gave their nod to a hospital in Vaughan in 2007. In 2009, local residents began to foot the $80-million bill for the 32-hectare site at Jane and Major Mackenzie St. and will be paying for the land through a surcharge on their property taxes until 2022.

But since then, the city has been unable to find common ground between the VHCC, a group headed by developer Michael DeGasperis, which entered into a legally binding agreement with the city when it helped broker the land in 2009 and Mackenzie Health, which was given a provincial mandate to build the hospital in 2011.

Early in May, the city of Vaughan released a two-page advertisement in the local paper celebrating the signing of a 99-year lease with Mackenzie Health. But the lease has a number of conditions, which basically require the city to end the agreement with the VHCC either through “mutual agreement ... or is declared null and void by the applicable court with jurisdiction.”

On Wednesday, The VHCC sent the city of Vaughan an offer for complete access to 62 acres of hospital lands to build the hospital. Previously, Mackenzie Health said it needed around 40 acres for the hospital and 10 acres to accommodate growth of the hospital.

“We point out that by executing this release, all of the conditions of the ground lease are satisfied and all of the requirements of Mackenzie Health and the Province have been met,” said Quinto Annibale, Secretary of VHCC in an email to the city’s lawyer. “Whether or not a hospital is built is now solely up to the City.”

The VHCC plans to hold on to the remainder lands, to build “hospital related” uses on the remaining lands in the future that “won’t compete with the hospital” and will have all revenue going to the hospital or health care services in the city, according to agreement.

But Mackenzie Health said that they “cannot speak to the negotiations between the City of Vaughan and the VHCC.”

Mayor Maurizio Bevilacqua says the city is doing whatever it can to come to a resolution - quickly. “No one is going to stand in the way of realizing the dream of 315,000 people who need access to health care,” he said. “This hospital is going to be built.”

Until then, residents of Vaughan will have to go beyond their borders to get the medical care they need.