A recent Chatham-Kent Health Coalition hospital survey shows travel, waiting times, bed and staff shortages along with a lack of doctors are local concerns.
Coalition Co-Chair Shirley Roebuck says respondents want two ERs to remain open in Wallaceburg and Chatham, something the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance insists will happen.
Roebuck says not everybody can go out of town for healthcare and wants service cuts to stop for an aging population.
"There are a lot of forgotten groups that heath care providers or experts in Toronto forget about. Those folks who are elderly and cannot drive, young single mothers with no access to a vehicle and the homeless," says Roebuck.
The coalition also wants an elected board of directors and not an appointed one to properly represent the community.
About three quarters of 370 survey respondents had good or positive experience accessing hospital care.
Roebuck says elected boards are more democratic and will serve our hospitals better.
"They're responsible to the community and you would get better results because the persons who are on the board are thinking of what the community's needs are," she says.
Roebuck says having an ER in Wallaceburg will take the pressure off the one in Chatham.
"It doesn't matter if you're from Chatham or Wallaceburg, together we need both hospitals in Chatham-Kent to continue to give good healthcare, we have room for improvement and we're going to push for that," she says.
You can read the entire report and the survey results here: Our Hospitals, Our Communities.
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