Building a plan

The community’s input will help address what priorities the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre should focus on, says the hospital's CEO and president.

The regional hospital held its second session at the Prince Arthur Hotel on Saturday. More than 100 community members, health-care professionals and business partners attended the daylong meeting.

The session focused four strategic directions that the hospital could take in the next four years. The values included acute care, chronic disease management, Aboriginal health and mental health and addictions.

Andrée Robichaud, president and CEO of the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre, said they’re taking all information from the hospitals managers to industry leaders.

The first public session was more to inform the community of the status of the health-care facility. The second session was more focused on giving the public a chance to voice their opinions on what kind of values the hospital should have, she said.

"People had wonderful ideas," Robichaud said. "It’s the community’s hospital. If the strategic plan is based on needs then the community needs to be involved. We need to understand those needs and be able to work on those needs."

Robichaud said there’s plenty of room for improvement at the hospital and the planning sessions will help in narrowing down what needs to be done first.

She added the draft will be presented in June.

Graeme Marchuk, neurosurgeon at the regional hospital, said it was his first time attending a strategic planning session and wanted to learn as much as he could. He said he wanted to see more improvements on the programs he believed were priorities for the hospital.

"The principal one that I would see is to improve the, what we call, the image guided intervention program, which we would like to see put in place," Marchuk said. "It would improve acute care for stroke and vascular and neurosurgical patients."