A joint steering committee on local hospital integration has reached preliminary agreement on a number of topics.
Following a third meeting on Oct. 14, the board chairs of Groves Memorial Community Hospital and North Wellington Health Care (NWHC) announced they “continued to make significant progress” in discussions and have come to preliminary agreement on:
– the composition and size of a joint executive committee and sub-committees;
– the authority that would be delegated by hospital boards to the joint executive committee as well as the authority for certain duties that would be retained by hospital boards;
– decision making processes at the joint executive committee level; and
– a dispute resolution process.
“We have reached a point in our discussions where we have instructed our legal counsel to develop a draft memorandum of understanding that will outline our agreements reached to date and define how our two organizations wish to work together to best serve the residents of our communities,” states a joint press release from Groves chair Howard Dobson and NWHC chair Tom Sullivan.
The draft memorandum will be reviewed by the joint steering committee on Oct. 28, the release states.
Once the joint steering committee members are satisfied with the contents of the memorandum, the document will be presented to and discussed in-depth with both hospital boards in mid-November.
Both boards will have the opportunity to review, provide feedback and consider the memorandum for approval.
“We are confident that the direction we have jointly developed that will form the basis of our [memorandum] will bring stability to an integrated governance structure for North Wellington Health Care and Groves Memorial Community Hospital,” the chairs state.
