London City Hall resistant to consolidating health units

A proposal to collapse local health units into 14 larger health agencies across Ontario isn’t going over well at London City Hall.

The community and protective services committee voted unanimously on Tuesday in favour of sending a letter to the ministry of health outlining the city’s concerns.

The proposal to collapse the local health units came from a panel of experts that were appointed by Health Minister Eric Hoskins as part of a review. Under the proposal, the province would create local health integration networks (LHIN).

London would be included in a network that stretched from Tobermory to Long Point.

Coun. Jesse Helmer, the chair of the board for the Middlesex-London Health Unit, says that’s too large of an area.

“If we were to switch to the LHIN boundary, we’re talking about a million people instead of over 400,000. We’d be covering a humongous area all the way up to the lake, and all the way down to the other lake in the south. That’s too big of an area because the needs of the population is quite different.”

Helmer says the idea would also create more bureaucracy.

“What we’re talking about is adding a regional medical officer of health for each one of those 14 regions. So none of the existing medical officers of health are going to be unemployed. They are still going to look after their local service areas and we’re going to add 14 additional people, all of whom are public health physicians.”

The city says regional health units would negatively impact local relationships and could leave rural communities without a voice.