March 30, 2005 - Amherst Daily News

A challenge worth meeting
By Daily News Staff

When the Cumberland Health Authority entered into an agreement with the Department of Health a couple of years ago to add a number of key specialists few people figured it would have the impact that it has.
Although there were more than a few dark days when hospital officials wondered to themselves, as well as aloud, whether they would be successful at attracting these new specialists, a new hospital has played a prominent role in helping the authority turn the corner.

The former Highland View Regional Hospital served the community well over the years, but it really wasn’t an attractive place to practice medicine and hospital officials were really limited in what they were able to do in terms of introducing new technologies in areas such as surgery and obstetrics.

When it was preparing to build the new regional hospital in the mid-1990s, the design team included three operating rooms in plans with an eye to treating more patients closer to home and attracting new specialists to deliver these services.

Although plans for the third OR were shelved as part of the process to bring down the price of the hospital, the health authority and the hospital’s surgical team never lost sight of their goal of opening that third OR as soon as possible.

With the arrival of eight new specialists during 2004, the demands on the two existing ORs increased. Wonderful things are being done at the Cumberland regional hospital – things that you would expect to be restricted to larger urban centres. However, until that third OR was approved the hospital’s surgical department was not able to reach its full potential.

On Tuesday, Health Minister Angus MacIsaac was in town to announce the province’s commitment to fund the opening of that OR. The province is providing $500,000 of the $800,000 price tag while a federal medical equipment fund is providing another $100,000. Now that the two levels of government have stepped forward with their contributions, the onus is now on the local community to raise the remaining $200,000 to make the project a reality and it appears as though the Cumberland Health Care Foundation is up to the challenge.

When the community was given the task of raising $7 million to fund the new hospital, there were more than a few skeptics. But, the community proved them wrong raising more than $7.5 million through the Above & Beyond Campaign and there’s no reason to believe the community won’t be there again to support health care in Cumberland County, just as it has time and time again over the years.