Strathroy, Ontario – Today Lambton-Kent-Middlesex PC Candidate Monte McNaughton ripped the recent announcement that six beds are being lost and four full-time Registered Nurses are losing their jobs at the Strathroy Middlesex General Hospital. Additionally, four beds will be lost at Four Counties Hospital in Newbury.

“Instead of putting money into front-line health care, Dalton McGuinty, Maria Van Bommel and their band of Liberals have focused their efforts on rewarding political allies through appointments to unelected LHINs bodies”, said McNaughton. “What they have done is diverted $250 million in health care dollars from the frontlines to pay for a bloated bureaucracy.”

In reality, LHINs are unelected, unaccountable and faceless bureaucracies the McGuinty Government hides behind whenever there are beds to close, emergency rooms to shut down or nurses to lay off.

“These regional health bureaucrats do not spend one minute treating patients. They have not performed a single surgery or administered a single MRI”, said McNaughton. 

In 2006 only two employees at the South West LHIN made six figure salaries and their total compensation totaled $316,000. Today six LHIN executives are making $885,000. Last year alone, the South West LHIN wasted $5.3 million health care dollars on administration – a 52 per cent increase since it was created four years ago. South West LHIN bureaucrats also spent over $3.3 million on consultants in that time.

The $5.3 million health care dollars wasted on South West LHIN administrative costs last year could have paid for as many as 6,586 MRI exams, 61 new nurse practitioners or a full year of long-term care for 122 seniors.

“It is simply unacceptable to families in Strathroy, Newbury and throughout Lambton-Kent-Middlesex that our emergency rooms are being forced to cut services in order to pay salaries and costs for political bureaucrats. It’s clear Dalton McGuinty’s LHIN model is broken and has to go.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Monte McNaughton, PC Candidate, Lambton-Kent-Middlesex
Phone: (519)852-5300
E-Mail: monte@montemcnaughton.com