Quality emergency services and a Step-Down Unit are an essential part of maintaining our readiness to serve you. They are essential to our tourism businesses and one of the first things that businesses consider when looking to set up shop in Muskoka and East Parry Sound.

We are asking you to invest in our emergency and day surgery needs. We need your commitment to the best health care professionals with the right facilities to provide the emergency and day surgery services that meet your needs.

     The growing and ageing population of Muskoka and East Parry Sound is resulting in some very serious demands on the diagnostic and imaging departments in our Hospital. Since the technology involves leading edge, sensitive equipment that lasts 5-10 years, this equipment usually becomes obsolete within 7 years.

   We are proud of the way our community has recognized the need to provide our doctors with the diagnostic and imaging equipment to do their job. We are proud that we do 95% of the diagnostics tests needed right here in our Hospital. This saves time in quickly diagnosing a problem and allows the right treatment to be started right away.

   We need your commitment to help fund new equipment that will be required as our community grows.

   These are some of our most pressing needs in this area:

CAT SCAN: A CAT Scan machine is quickly moving from being a luxury only big city hospitals have, to being an essential service for a community such as ours. Presently patients have to travel to Orillia or Barrie for this test, and that shouldn’t be the case. Our community should expect to be diagnosed here--quickly and efficiently. We want to provide this service as soon as possible. $1 Million is required.

X-RAY MACHINES: X-Rays have been a vital part of accurately diagnosing internal injuries and illnesses for a long time. Our X-Ray machines, however, are rapidly approaching the end of their serviceable life. It is becoming more difficult to repair these machines and the needed parts are simply unavailable. We need to raise $500,000 to $750,000 to ensure the best X-Ray services are available here in Muskoka and East Parry Sound.

LABORATORY INFORMATION SYSTEMS: Imagine trying to keep track of more than 1.5 million medical tests each and every year without a central computer system coordinating these detailed results. That is what our diagnostics staff must do. We need a new laboratory information system that will make the processing and transcribing of the many tests more efficient and accurate. This new system costs $200,000.

CHEMISTRY ANALYSIS: Medical advances are continuously being helped by very precise tests being performed today. One critical piece of equipment that is used 24 hours a day is the Chemistry Analyzer, a machine that measures more than 50 different chemistry tests, such as blood sugar for diabetes, heart enzyme, and kidney and liver functions. An ageing population requires us to have this important piece of equipment. The cost is $130,000.

   These diagnostic and imaging services are often the fine line between success and failure in treatment. Your health depends on our being able to provide a full range of services right here in your community.

     The fact is that more people in this province die from cardiovascular diseases, strokes and respiratory diseases than any other cause -- 46.7% of all deaths. That is more than the number of people who die from cancer, accidents or other causes of death.

  The needs we face are in the area of equipment and personnel. These are linked together: if we provide the needed equipment, then we will be able to attract the qualified staff and expert personnel required.

  Here are some of the equipment needs you can help with:

NEW BiPAP MACHINE AND VENTILATOR IN THE INTENSIVE CARE UNIT: A new BiPap machine would help us care for cardio-respiratory patients in a less intrusive manner than current equipment allows, while actually helping to speed recovery time. This machine helps a patient breathe without having to insert anything in the airway and has been proven to speed healing processes and improve the odds for a full recovery. We also need to replace the ventilator in our Intensive Care Unit. 
The cost of these important tools is $10,000 and $45,000 respectively.

THE HOLTER MONITOR SYSTEM: This system is an important piece of equipment that helps our doctors and nurses monitor and treat cardio-respiratory patients. It is a heart monitoring electrocardiogram system that provides accurate information on a patient’s condition, information that is vital in the fight for lives.
The cost for replacing our current, outdated system is $47,000.

PULMONARY FUNCTIONS TESTING UNIT: People who suffer from bronchitis or asthma need to have their condition regularly and accurately evaluated. This unit provides accurate information on a wide range of breathing problems so those patients can be accurately treated.
The cost of replacing our current, outdated unit is $40,000.

     The staff at our Hospital needs to have the proper technology to treat the growing requirements for these services in our community.

     Health care is no longer about curing a disease, mending a broken bone or prescribing a medication. Health care today is about providing a continuum of care, with the emphasis on providing a total health care package that looks after you when you leave the Hospital.

   Proper rehabilitation services get people back on their feet faster. These services provide the long-term care that helps patients receive the care and attention that they need. It is founded on a philosophy that seeks to meet the needs of an ageing population in a seamless way.

   The growth and age of our population will, in the next 10 years, put increased pressures on Algonquin Health Services to provide adequate rehabilitation and long-term care.

   This is what we need to continue to provide these services:

EXPANSION OF REHABILITATION SERVICES AT HUNTSVILLE DISTRICT MEMORIAL HOSPITAL: Our current facilities were simply not designed to handle the rehabilitation needs we face today. Compounding our space problem is the need for very specialized programs--physiotherapy programs, speech pathology needs, etc.--to deliver these services. We will also require staff. The cost is $400,000.

DEVELOP REHABILITATION AT BURK’S FALLS HEALTH CENTRE: Our facility at Burk’s Falls provides us with the opportunity to deliver rehabilitation services to local patients in their own community. Again, our increasing rehabilitation needs require us to develop the site to handle our current, and future, needs. The cost is $200,000.

FAIRVERN NURSING HOME: Long-term care is one of the major issues in health care today. The debate about how to tackle the growing need for long-term care beds across Ontario means that we need to be very clear and very determined about the needs our community has.

     We know that the need for beds at Fairvern will continue into the foreseeable future. Our plan includes up to 75 new beds to meet the anticipated needs for long term care in our community. We will also need to relocate and expand rehabilitation in the Nursing Home to meet the needs of the residents.