3 Area Health Unites Merge Into One

Jeff Green | Jan 09, 2025

Kingston Frontenac Lennox and Addington Public Health (KFLAPH) Hastings Prince Edward Public Health, and the Leeds Grenville Lanark District Public Health Unit officially merged to form the South East Health Unit (SEHU) on January 1^st.

The inaugural board meeting took place on the 1^st, over Zoom. Jan O'Neill, the mayor of  Hastings County was elected chair of the new board, and Judy Greenwood-Speers, the mayor of Frontenac Islands, who had been serving as the Frontenac County rep to the old KFLAPH board, was elected vice chair of the new board. 

Dr. Piotr Oglaza, who has been serving as Medical Officer of Health and Chief Executive Officer of KFLAPH since late in 2021, was appointed to those same roles at SEHU.

Dr. Ethan Toumishay, who had been serving as Medical Officer of Health and CEO in Hastings Prince Edward, and Dr. Linna Lin,who had the same role in Lanark Leeds and Grenville, were appointed as Deputy MEdical Officers of Health to SEHU.

Dr. Hugh Guan will continue in the role of Associate Medical Officer of Health with SEHU, a role he had previously held at KFLAPH.

The first talk of merging the three organisations goes back almost a decade, to a report from an expert panel on the future of public health in Ontario, under the former Liberal government under Kathleen Wynne, in 2016. 

In October of 2017, Dennis Doyle, then the mayor of Frontenac Islands and the board chair of KFLAPH, rebuffed the proposal in a letter to then Minister of Health Eric Hoskins, on behalf of KFLAPH. 

Doyle made the point that, unlike in some locations across the province, with a population of 200,000,  KFLAPH was large enough to manage its responsibilities and would not benefit from the 'economy of scale' that the ministry was promoting.

“Given the complexity of implementation and so many details left to work out, we cannot support the proposed changes without clear articulation of the benefits and justification of the costs. The document does not convince this Board of Health that the Expert Panel's recommendations are the only or even the best way to move forward ... Fix what is broken, small health units that lack a critical mass and capacity to deliver services would benefit from amalgamation, but if it is not broken don't fix it.”

One of the differences between the 2016 expert panel report and the initiative announced by the Ford government late in 2023, was that the province is now  offering to pay any costs that are associated with the mergers.

“Not only will the province cover the costs, but if there are operational savings associated with the changes, that money will stay local to enhance the services that we offer,” Dr. Oglaza said, in a phone interview this week

He was quick to add, however, that mergers and amalgamations like this more often result in increased service capacity rather than direct cost savings.

As well, the passage of time, and the COVID epidemic, have changed some of the thinking among officials at KFLAPH about merging with their neighbours.

Dr. Oglaza pointed out this week that the increased staff complement of the larger SEHU, which will serve about 550,000 people in a six county area that also includes the separated cities Brockville, Smiths Falls, Kingston and Belleville, can make a difference when the next pandemic event surfaces.

“We will be more capable of mounting a robust response to a pandemic, whatever form it takes, while still being able to maintain our regular services,” he said.

He cited an example from the early days of COVID, when serving in Prince Edward Hastings, whose responsibilities extended to the Trenton Air Force Base. 

“We were tasked with ensuring the safety of the passengers and air force personnel when Canadian citizens were being repatriated from Wuhan in early 2020, which made it difficult for us to provide support to long term care facilities in the rest of Hastings and Prince Edward. If we had a larger staff complement to draw from, it would have been much easier, and more effective,” he said.

Diverting inspection staff to long term care facilities in early 2020, before the lockdown in March of that year, has been credited as one of the reasons that the COVID death rate in the spring and summer of 2020 was significantly lower in KFLAPH than in other parts of the province.

“Another opportunity we will be exploring, is to look east-west as we design a new service model,” Dr. Oglaza said. “Because of the north-south geography of the three former areas, services flowed that way, but we now can look at the Highway 401 corridor in the heavier populated part of the region, and at the Highway 7 corridor in the more rural northern part of the region. Residents of Sharbot Lake, for example, often access health services in Perth, which is now part of the same public health region.”

Judy Greenwood-Speers said that she is quite excited about the work that is being undertaken by the new board.

“I'm looking forward to that process. It really is a wonderful time,” she said.

In her former career as a nurse and healthcare administrator, Greenwood-Speers was part of the rebuild of a hospital, as well as other mergers in healthcare.

“We’ll be on the learning curve for the first year at least, but taking advantage of the existing strengths of the organisations that are coming together, and being able to rethink and redesign how we do things is a great opportunity for improvement, for urban and rural residents.”

“It’s truly an exciting time for our three legacy agencies,” said Jan O’Neill, Board Chair for the new South East Health Unit, in a release following the inaugural meeting on January 1st. “Speaking for the Board, we’re committed to working together to find new and innovative ways to best serve our various communities.”

The business case for the South East Health Unit was completed in the summer of 2024, approved by all three boards and presented to the ministry.

Then came the wait. As late as mid-November it appeared that the proposed start date for the new organisation of January 1, 2025, would be missed, as there had been no word from the province.

That all changed in late November, when three mergers were approved with new provincial legislation, with the South East Health Unit being the only merger between the existing organisations.

The boards of the three Health Units met in the first week of December to formally approve the establishment of South East Health Unit.

At that time, Wes Garrod, the chair of KFLAPH said “this merger of the three health units will ensure that those who work at KFL&A Public Health will continue to serve the community as they always have, but with the improved capacity through the South East Board of Health, to become a stronger, more effective agency, providing best quality services on a daily basis to a larger geographic area.”

Garrod, who is based in Kingston, was a provincial appointee to the KFLAPH board. The new board is made up of 12 municipal appointees and 6 provincial appointees. There can be as many as 11 provincial appointees on the board.

While Wes Garrod is not one of the initial provincial appointees, Judy Greenwood-Speers said that she expects his appointment will follow in the coming weeks.

The service delivery model for residents of the three regions does not change with the amalgamation of the boards, at least for the time being.

Residents of Frontenac and Lennox and Addington Counties are encouraged to continue to  look to the kflaph.ca website for information, and continue to use 1-800-267-7875 as the contact number

The offices in Kingston, Napanee and Cloyne will continue to operate as normal. Water samples for residents of Central Frontenac and the eastern part of North Frontenac will continue to be collected at the Central Frontenac township office.