I have heard many great things about the Cornwall Community Hospital (CCH) this past month and the truth is I felt the need to give credit where credit is due in this week’s column.
Last Saturday saw another great gala evening for the Cornwall Community Hospital Foundation (CCHF).
The total numbers for money raised are still being tallied, but last year they raised $75,000. This year, they hope to put that money towards a new mammography machine, which alone will cost $400,000. Some of the money will also go towards other urgently needed equipment. The hospital receives no money from the province to buy equipment and raises all of that themselves through fundraisers and donations.
Earlier in 2019, they secured funding from the City of Cornwall, which they used with money they already raised to secure a residency program here in Cornwall for student doctors at Queen’s University.
When the CCH announced a few months ago that they were experiencing a doctors shortage in their Emergency Room, I worried that this would be an obstacle that would take the hospital some time to overcome.
To my surprise and delight, just a couple of months after that announcement, in September, the CCH sent out a media release stating that they had brought 10 new doctors onto their staff and that they now had a full roster covering the ER.
Just this past week, Accreditation Canada bestowed on our local hospital their top marks. The Cornwall hospital met 2169 out of 2184 quality criteria that Accreditation Canada measured. This shows I think that the hospital is doing well and is being well run in a wide range of areas.
I was disappointed to see some comment their disbelief that the CCH had received such accreditation, while others bemoaned the long wait times in the Emergency Room. If you go to the ER with a broken bone, a pulled muscle or a runny nose, will you have to wait awhile? Yes. But if you come in suffering from a heart attack, you will be triaged more quickly. Last year I inquired as to how are hospital stacked up in terms of wait times in comparison to other regional hospitals like the Alexandria and Winchester hospitals. Cornwall was either as good or better than its regional comparators when it came to ER wait times.
Is the CCH a perfect organization? No. There is no such thing, but they have had many great accomplishments over the past few weeks and have had one hell of a 2019 so far.
Like I said, credit where it is due, just because the hospital has not met everyone’s standards in expectations in every way, does not mean that we are not lucky to have them in our community.
The CCH has saved many lives in Cornwall and the surrounding area, and they have clearly been putting in a strong effort to improve their services to the community.
Also, don’t take my word for it. This past week I received messages from readers that they asked me to publish in this paper praising the care they received at the CCH. You can find these messages in the Scuttlebutt section of this week’s paper and they are just two examples of the messages of thanks I hear or am sent about our hospital on an almost weekly basis.
What do you think though readers? How is our community hospital doing? Email me a Letter to the Editor at nseebruch@seawaynews.media
