Quebec’s health minister has nominated ten new members of the MUHC’s board of directors.
The new independent board members are :
- Peter Kruyt, president
- Deep Khosla, social services
- Dale MacCandlish‐Weil, auditing and quality management
- James Cherry, auditing and quality management
- Thomas Pitifield, real estate and human relations
- Michal Piotr Kuzmicki, real estate and human relations
- Kevin O'Farrell, real estate and human relations
- Mary‐Anne Carignan, real estate and human relations
- Samira Sakhia, finance and risk management
- Sarah Prichard, ethics
In July, ten of 19 board members announced that they were at an impasse with tHealth Minister Gaetan Barrette after a long battle over whether the hospital centre is underfunded or if it is poorly managed.
One issue that continues to plague the MUHC is that patients use the facility as an entry point into the health care system, as though it were a walk-in clinic – a problem particularly seen in the anglophone community.
The hospital is meant to be used as a tertiary care facility.
The hospital can’t however, turn people away.
Asked if the new board will help resolve this issue, Barrette said, “It is not necessarily up to the board to convince the public in general not to come here, but in Quebec, people are entitled to go where there want to go. But the message is clearly, look, the entry point is not necessarily the MUHC, but if people want to come here, they can come here. But primary care… this is not a community hospital. This is a tertiary level of care hospital and it has to remain that way.”
Barrette said it would be up to the board if they want to address this issue, though that remains to be seen.
No CEO has been named to the hospital yet. The new board will make two suggestions before Barrette makes the final decision.
The MUHC has been without a CEO since last September.
