The boards of health of the Thunder Bay district and Northwestern health units have announced that they will not move forward with negotiations to voluntarily merge the two organizations.Posted: Apr 18, 2024 7:16 PM EDT | Last Updated: 3 hours ago
"If merger was pushed ahead, you'd have an area from Manitouwadge basically to the Manitoba border. It's not sustainable. … Your service quality is going to be compromised." Dr. Kit Young Hoon is the medical officer of health for the Northwestern Health Unit. She said a merged health unit would still need to provide different programming to meet the needs of different communities. In addition to concerns about geography and service standards, there were also financial implications involved in merging, Smith said.
The Northwestern Health Unit feared that merging could make it harder to recruit service providers into smaller communities, said Chief Executive Officer Marilyn Herbacz. There were also potential savings involved in having a single CAO and a single medical officer of health, Smith explained.Even merging IT and human resources departments would require a costly process of adopting uniform systems, Herbacz added.