Implementing our plan

By Rik Ganderton
President & CEO

As many of you will now be aware, OPSEU has decided to withdraw its motion for an injunction that was to be heard in Court on Friday May 16th. An application for judicial review of the process used by the CELHIN will now be heard by the Court on July 11th.

RVHS is now in a position to start implementing the Deficit Elimination Plan that was approved by our Board on March 25th. The plan is the foundation for the Hospital Services Accountability Agreement (H-SAA) that we signed with the Central East LHIN in early April.

This afternoon we provided formal notification to our various Unions regarding the restructuring. This will mean the provisions of the various collective agreements will kick in and we will start to deal with Early Retirement and Voluntary Exit Packages and subsequent (and hopefully minimal) individual notices of layoffs.

This has been a very difficult time for all our staff. We all know that we had to take these difficult but important actions. We have all been frustrated by the implementation delays forced on us over the last six weeks or so. However, we will now start implementation and the transformation of RVHS into a higher performing hospital; a hospital that we can be proud to work for, that provides the core services our communities need in a caring and efficient way and relentlessly focuses on delivering the highest quality of care.

Thank you all for your patience during this very difficult period. We have lots of work to do as we continue to develop detailed implementation plans and make the needed changes. I look forward to working with you all as we transform RVHS to be the best at what we do.

Injunction

By Rik Ganderton
President and CEO

OPSEU has brought a court application seeking a Judicial Review of the Central East LHIN's process in approving the RVHS Deficit Elimination Plan, which includes the consolidation of mental health beds at Centenary. OPSEU has also served RVHS with a Notice of Motion seeking an injunction restraining it from implementing the mental health bed consolidation until the application is determined by the Court. In these circumstances, our legal counsel has advised that:

1. We should not discuss this matter publicly, while it is before the courts; and

2. We should not commence implementation until the legal matter is resolved.

We will keep you posted as to updates on this matter.