Tempers flare over Montréal’s Maisonneuve-Rosemont hospital after power outage and generator failure
Public outcry has led the government to free up funding to address the crisis at one of Montréal and Québec’s biggest hospitals.
After weeks of controversy, the Québec government announced it has $85 million to begin much-needed repairs, starting with the parking lot, to a major Quebec hospital. Critics and activists say fixing the parking lot is way short of what is required. They are calling for an injection of approximately $5 billion to update the facility.
The government of Premier François Legault and his party the Coalition Avenir Québec has been promising major renovations at Hôpital Maisonneuve Rosemont (HMR) for years, but has repeatedly pushed back the timeline, citing the budget situation and other needs.
HMR is located in the east end boroughs of Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie and Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve. It has 500 beds and is one of the largest hospitals in Quebec, providing care to nearly 550,000 patients every year and employing 5,000 people.
On Tuesday, April 29, a violent spring storm knocked out power to the hospital, its backup power system failed, and officials were forced to cancel surgeries.
The intensive-care unit and surgery block were completely in the dark for more than an hour. Elevators, respirators, infusion pumps, and other electrically powered equipment failed. The power outage occurred between two surgeries so no patients were directly affected but water dripped into the operating room. Flying glass from windows that were blown out caused minor injuries to some nursing staff.
Hospital staff have previously come forward with reports of squirrels, bats and ants inside the aging building, founded in 1971, a merger of two previous hospitals built in the late 1940s and early 1950s: Hôpital Maisonneuve and the tuberculosis sanatorium Hôpital Saint-Joseph de Rosemont.
The day after the storm and power outage the ongoing controversy about the deterioration of the hospital came to a head when medical staff held a demonstration outside the hospital demanding the government fix the problems at the hospital.
The head of the biggest nurse’s union in Quebec, the FIQ’s Julie Bouchard said: “Who can believe that if a huge hole opened up on an autoroute and threatened the lives of motorists, we would wait three years to repair it? We would fill this hole as a matter of urgency. We would secure the area immediately. Because it’s a matter of public safety. And this logic should apply to Maisonneuve-Rosemont. A dilapidated hospital that puts the lives of staff and patients at risk.”
“For years, we’ve been propping up the hospital from one catastrophe to another, trying not to let it show, trying to make sure the worst doesn’t happen,” Dr. Chantal Rivard, who’s been working there for 28 years, told the CBC.
“Mr. Legault, are you waiting for someone to die to do something?”
A coalition has been formed to push forward on the much-needed renovations.
The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) headed by François Legault has been severely criticized and is under political pressure over the health care system in general and specifically the state of the hospital.
CAQ Health Minister Christian Dubé has now said the government will revise the Québec infrastructure plan so that the necessary funds can be released for the project.
Opposition Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon accused the governing CAQ of having ulterior political motives.
“The risk here is that the envelope that should be used for the hospital, the project as a whole, be spent on other projects, leaving us with a parking lot and no more money to go forward with the hospital project. That’s the risk here,” St-Pierre Plamondon said. “So we want the project to be budgeted as a whole to make sure that once the parking is done, we have the money to go forward in other steps of that project.
“But it’s very tempting for the government to just spend on the parking and use the monies for other projects elsewhere based on a calculation of where they will get the most votes.”
Feature photo: Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont in Montréal by Jeangagnon is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported.
