The Article by President and CEO of Niagara Health

My response to the article…

Letter to the Editor – Niagara Falls Review

May 2, 2025 – Primary Care opinion piece

False claims and innuendo’s made by Lynn Guerriero CEO of Niagara Health by blaming people for utilizing the health system they have; detracts from the needs of each municipality within the Niagara Region.

It has been her responsibility and the Niagara Health Board to provide the quality care needed in the whole of Niagara region not just in the large urban centres. People in Fort Erie and Port Colborne are not stuck in the past; they are very much in the here and now and they require care in their communities and should not be at risk of losing what is rightfully theirs (Douglas Memorial Hospital and Port Colborne General Hospitals.)

These centres do not take away from the building of the newer centres, but they do supply a needed service “close to home” where that care is accessible and needed. If our health system was truly fulfilling the mandate of the Canada Health Act and the Ontario Plan for Connected and Convenient Care Act; they would be working on a method to keep and maintain all the current small and rural hospitals and would be working on plans that could provide care and treatment where people live.

Primary care must include urgent and emergency care. These situations may be reduced by waiting to see your own Doctor or a clinic doctor or a pharmacist or a telehealth nurse, but the medical condition must still be diagnosed with equipment that is found in a hospital and treated in a hospital and followed up by Doctors, home-care or long term care as the condition warrants. Niagara Health has failed to provide these necessities for people in Fort Erie and Port Colborne and it is this health system that has failed to meet the growing health needs of our communities at an overwhelming cost. It has been their ineptitude in caring for everyone equitably that needs to be addressed. We need care in our community, close to home and family support systems.

We need more Doctors, more nurses, more technicians, more hospitals and they need to stop blaming people that are sick. These health systems need to plan to provide care people need, where they need it and when they need it! It is not the people that have failed the system it is the system that is failing the people.

Heather Kelley