The North East LHIN, already one of the largest of 14 LHINs in Ontario, is being folded into one of just five interim regions, says a news release this morning from the Ontario government.
"On December 2, 2019, five provincial agencies will begin transferring into Ontario Health while the 14 Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs) have been clustered into five interim and transitional geographic regions," says the release.
The government calls it an "administrative step only and not a merger of the LHIN boundaries."
The NELHIN is presently responsible for planning, integrating and funding health care services for more than 565,000 people across 400,000 square kilometres in the northeast.
The release adds, "There will be no impact to patients' access to home and community care or long-term care placement. These changes are a means of streamlining the regional oversight as an interim measure as the government continues to work toward moving home and community care supports out of bureaucracy to integrate them with Ontario Health Teams."
"In order to bring our world-class health care system into the 21st century, we need to get rid of the inefficiencies and back-office duplication," said Premier Doug Ford. "This is how we are continuing to put patients first and ensure sustainability for future generations."
As part of this next step to cluster the LHINs, the number of chief executive officer positions has been reduced to five to ensure alignment and to eliminate duplication of roles and responsibilities. These five CEOs will now serve as interim regional leads and will be responsible for supporting the work required to transition LHIN functions into Ontario Health or to Ontario Health Teams, and to ensure that patient services continue uninterrupted.
Kate Fyfe , Acting Chief Executive Officer heads the NELHIN but is not one of those five appointees.
"On December 2, we bring the knowledge, skills, and experience of this first wave of transferring organizations into Ontario Health and begin working with the five interim regional leads too," said Bill Hatanaka, Ontario Health Board Chair. "We are building our talent base to become one agency with one strategy and one set of priorities; applying the best of our collective expertise to all Ontario patients."
The five agencies transferring into Ontario Health are:
- Cancer Care Ontario;
- Health Quality Ontario;
- eHealth Ontario;
- Health Shared Services Ontario; and
- HealthForceOntario Marketing and Recruitment Agency.
The five interim new appointees are: Bruce Lauckner (West), Scott McLeod (Central), Tess Romain (Toronto), Renato Discenza (East), and Rhonda Crocker Ellacott (North). Crocker-Ellacott presently heads the LHIN in Thunder Bay
