President and CEO of Quinte Health, Stacey Daub, says the organization is working to meet the growing demand for its services in the region.
At the Belleville Chamber of Commerce breakfast on Wednesday, Daub delivered a presentation discussing strategies being implemented at the four hospitals under the discretion of Quinte Health.
“We have hired 444 new team members to Quinte Health this year, 444! That is all frontline staff,” Daub said during her presentation.
“In addition to that, we have hired 62, either new local or associate positions, to the organization … you hear all the time that health care is difficult. We’re recruiting.”
Daub noted that a lot of the hires are coming from Loyalist College, highlighting the repatriated registered nurse program being offered by the school.
“This year, with the program being repatriated here, we had 27 students from Loyalist and we’re hiring 25 of them. So it gives you a sense of how powerful that model of developing and locally growing a talent is,” Daub said in her presentation.
When it comes to demand at the hospital, Daub says that is in part due to an aging population in the region that is notably higher than in other regions.
“So we have a older community and that just doesn’t impact the the demand for hospital, it impacts the number of health care workers,” Daub explained.
“If you have an aging community, you have less people who are working age. It impacts the economics of a city in town. So we have to work at this with our municipalities and with others.”
Speaking with Quinte News after the presentation, Daub said it is important to have the business leaders in the audience get to know the public service leaders.
“Together, we’re responsible I think for supporting our communities and helping them be healthier and better connected,” Daub tells Quinte News.
“(I had) people coming up afterwards talking about what they learned about Quinte Health, what they didn’t know, what inspired them about the work that the hospital’s doing and our community’s doing, so it was a great way to spend the morning for sure.”
