The Hastings Prince Edward Public Health Unit will be looking at a potential merger with the Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington Health Unit (KFL&A) and the Leeds, Grenville and Lanark District Health Unit.
At the Board of Health meeting on Wednesday, a motion was passed to establish a Voluntary Merger Committee that would look at potential voluntary mergers and work with other Boards of Health.
The newly formed committee would then report back to the Hastings Prince Edward Board of Health with recommendations.
“What we’re working towards is a proposal, so we’re exploring crafting a proposal with these other health units,” Medical Officer of Health for Hastings Prince Edward Public Health, Dr. Ethan Toumishey, tells Quinte News.
“What we will be looking at is all encompassing between the operations between the health units, the financial pictures, those operations at a program level that we’re serving and that we are currently already serving in partnership.”
Dr. Toumishey says the health units are under a tight timeline to put together a proposal that meets the province’s guidelines.
“It will be a lot of work that we’ll be doing in a short period of time for this but the end goal is to work towards a proposal that we will then present to the province with these two other partners.” Dr. Toumishey says.
The decision to look into voluntary mergers come from an announcement back in August by the Ministry of Health at the 2023 Association of Municipalities Ontario conference that changes how public health units would be funded and directed.
All three health units have worked with each other in the past, something that helped get conversations about the merger going.
“These are partners that we have collaborated with in the past and also share a lot of partners say in the healthcare space and community services space. So we have a lot of historical partnerships that would be there,” Dr. Toumishey said.
“So that has been from this engagement and as highlighting where we currently work together, how we have worked together, we’d be interested in exploring into the future.”
One of the directives from the province when it comes to public health unit mergers is that the proposed merged health unit would serve a population base of at least over 500,000.
If the three health units merged, they would serve a population of approximately 571,000.
The motion to explore the merger further was passed unanimously in a recorded vote.
The Voluntary Merger Committee will be comprised of Dr. Toumishey as a non-voting member, Mayor of Marmora and Lake and Board of Health Chair Jan O’Neil, Belleville councillor Sean Kelly and provincial representative Dr. Jeffrey Allin.
