When: Wednesday, May 7, 2008, 7:00 pm
Where: Pembroke Legion, 202 Pembroke St. East
Who: Concerned citizens of the Pembroke area, members of the Ontario Coalition of Hospital Unions (OCHU – CUPE) and other health care professionals.
What: Workers and union leaders in the health care sector will explain why the project of centralizing the hospital laboratories into one or two locations in the whole Champlain LHIN is a bad idea for our communities and for the quality of the services provided by local hospitals.
They will launch a campaign aimed at convincing the LHIN to abandon that project.
Why: The Eastern Ontario Regional Laboratory Association (EORLA) is moving towards a single employer model and the centralization of testing in one or two hospitals for the Champlain LHIN area, which goes from Cornwall to Pembroke. This would mean the closing of local labs in a dozen hospitals in the region, the loss of high skill jobs in those areas and more delays in obtaining test results for patients. This project is wrong from a public health perspective and is not even supposed to generate significant savings, even according to its promoters.
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For more information, contact:
| Benoit Renaud, CUPE communications Rep. | Michael Hurley, President, OCHU |
| Cell: 613-818-0077 | W: 416-599-0770 x 21 |
| brenaud@cupe.ca | Cell: 416-884-0770 |
| michaelhurley@ochu.on.ca |