Letters to the Editor – September 20, 2023

CISSSO’s centralized administration fails the Pontiac

An open letter to Christian Dubé,
Quebec's Minister of Health and Social Services

Dear Minisiter,
In 2015 the CSSS du Pontiac was fused with five other hospitals to create the CISSS de l’Outaouais. Most administrative positions and financial responsibility were transferred to Gatineau. Before the fusion under local administration, the CSSS du Pontiac was the only one of the six hospitals in the Outaouais to be able to balance its budget and at that time had the least number of administrators per capita. Since that time, in addition to loosing financial and administrative control, there has been a progressive decrease in services offered to the population.

1. Obstetrics service has been closed and unlikely to return, despite reassurances from CISSSO it is a priority of theirs.
2. Cataract surgery and follow up have been progressively transferred to the city.
3. The absence of consulting specialists in gynecology, gastro-enterology and urology.
4. An important decrease of endoscopies performed.
   It is not clear if this is deliberate, or a failure of the CISSSO’s centralized administration. The remaining local management have enormous responsibilities to ensure care for the Pontiac communities. They have recently been successful in:
5. Resolving the lack of inhalational therapists, therefore ensuring that the operating room remains open.
6. Avoiding the temporary closure of the emergency rooms caused by the lack of ER physicians.
   Solutions should exist to guarantee adequate medical care in rural areas. The government should give a clear mandate to their CISSS’s, to re-establish sufficient care here in the Pontiac and other rural communities.

Dr. Thomas C. O’Neill F.C.F.P., C.C.F.P. ( FPA)
Assistant Professor of Family Medicine, McGill University

The future is unwritten

Dear Editor,
I’m a boomer - born late in the 40s, I came of age in the late 60s. My life was different from that of my parents. New phenomena, including world-wide electronic communications, psychoactive substances and meditative methods previously known only to shamans in ‘primitive’ cultures, and the very real possibility of misguided leaders unleashing devastating nuclear warfare, possibly ending our civilization, all came out of the background and into popular consciousness. My growing up was inevitably different from that of my parents.
I predict that the same can be said by the younger people of today, looking back wistfully toward their upbringing, if and when they achieve the grand old age of retirement. Life experience is difficult to honour, when that experience was gained in a world radically different from the one we inhabit. It seems we have little power to alter the viewpoints of others, but we can train ourselves to go with the flow of change, rather than gritting our teeth and insisting that young people aspire to the goals, by the methods that we did, back when we were young enough to matter to the future.
Things that we have known, which will predictably be rare if not absent in the future, include: single careers that last a working lifetime, marriages that last a child-rearing lifetime, living in the same house or neighbourhood, even the same city or country, for a lifetime - these social constructs may not exist, and will almost certainly be in the minority, when we boomers wander off into the mists of dementia, muttering about the ‘good old days’. Perhaps the best we can hope for, is that those mutterings will be captured and streamed, for the entertainment of those who are naively certain that they have no use for the things we thought were so important.

Robert Wills, Thorne and Shawville