In a recent ElliotLakeToday story, Elliot Lake Mayor Dan Marchisella made a few observations as he nears the second half of his second term in the mayor's chair.
Following is the second part of our interview:
ElliotLakeToday: Your objections to the communications protocols being used by Algoma Public Health have captured media attention lately. You have been adamant about the unusefulness and timeliness of the APH - COVID-19 reporting system with its vague accounting and delayed information release on local cases. How do read the situation now?
Mayor Marchisella: I've been getting the same story consistently from APH. I know that at a board level, the (APH) board took it very very seriously, to the fact that they decided to have a governance committee meeting to review their policies on communication.
I have an issue when I talked about communication. They say, 'We're going to communicate the same message to the public regardless, and we've put out all these posters.' Realistically I don't care about new posters. They all say the same thing so the message will remain the same. My issue is, if we don't have that information in a timely manner, our emergency management team cannot act to protect our residents.
I've said it before. I think everybody I've spoken to is reiterating the same thing. We have a 50 per cent age population that are vulnerable to this virus where we're at a higher need for this information to stop it from spreading like wildfire, if it becomes communal. So many people are going to be lost.
Although we have been planning for the worst-case scenario. I don't want to see the worst-case scenario. It all comes back to that information. 48 hours is too long to wait, after APH knows. I shouldn't be getting the information at the same time as the media and emergency management teams should be getting the information, immediately.
They've used the Privacy Protection Act as reasoning. Municipal government, and all the officials we have on our emergency management team are trusted and had to swear our lives away, basically, for confidentiality purposes. We know how to keep individual personal information confidential and on top of that, we're not even asking for the confidential information. We just need numbers, and how they contracted the virus. And that's it.
I don't think there's a big thing to ask. We've looked at how all other districts in the province are handling it. And they're handling it much, much better than Algoma District is.
ElliotLakeToday: Public safety has been put into very tight focus during our battle with COVID-19. It has brought our healthcare professionals into the spotlight as never before. It has also faced changes in hospital procedures and access, patient appointments with their doctors, along with dentists and other caregivers. In your opinion, is this going to lead to any permanent changes to healthcare in Elliot Lake?
Mayor Marchisella: I think definitely the mindset will never change on being more cautious, especially when you see people coming feverishly into the emergency room. I think everyone is going to be stuck in a permanent vigilance mode in caring for patients, but it's also opened up a whole new avenue for something the city actually in our health care providers, adopted.
Almost a year ago was the virtual clinic and this is something that is being utilized more and more across the whole country. It goes back to technology. The internet's loving this one because without the internet and that virtual communication, people would be suffering a lot more. But I think we're going to see in the future that these virtual meetings will expand.
ElliotLakeToday: The issue of accessibility to a personal physician and being accepted as a rostered patient continues to be discussed. In light of a continuing shortage of medical professionals and as a member of the Physicians Recruitment Group, do you have any hope that this problem can be rectified anytime in the near future?
Mayor Marchisella: I do and you know what? Elliot Lake is almost capped out at the maximum amount of doctors we're allowed to have here. That being said though, we do have a lot of our physicians that are ready to retire so the Physician Recruitment Team is aware of this and has potential new doctors planned for year after year for the next few years.
We have Dr Emory Nelson sign on as a new physician in Elliot Lake. That's supposed to be starting in the fall, so we'll see her be a part of the team. But we also have plans for additional doctors the year after and the year after that.
We'll start replacing some of our doctors that are ready to retire. When you look at the whole retirement piece, some of our doctors have gone from a roster of 1200 patients, down to 600. They're not able to handle the same caseload anymore, so with the new doctors coming in, they'll be able to handle a much larger caseload. You have to remember it's not just for Elliott Lake that we're taking care of here.
Elliot Lake's a hub for the whole North Shore and all the communities in the North Shore, so it is a big, big burden on our healthcare system locally, but the plan is in place and we have very high hopes for future recruitment that seem really solid. I don't think the pandemic is going to change that. I think it's going to just reinforce the needs.
ElliotLakeToday: On the idea of attracting a walk-in clinic to Elliot Lake, I have been told such a development would not work in favour of the Elliot Lake Family Health Team on many levels, including financially. But in light of the unfairness of making seniors without a doctor wait in hospital emergency for four hours to get prescriptions renewed, should the city work to attract such a clinic? If 'yes', how?
Mayor Marchisella: That is something that has been discussed. There used to be walk-in clinics here. For various reasons that disappeared and one of our steps was heading into the virtual clinic idea for exactly that.
Where you don't have to go to the emergency room, you can go to the virtual clinic and get your prescriptions refilled. But a lot of the people moving here don't realize that you can sit on the waiting list for a new doctor for years. If you don't give up your doctor that you have in southern Ontario or wherever you came from. Literally, the doctor can't pick you up if you still have a current provider.
So that's something that the Family Health Team tries to reiterate to newcomers, that you'll be scooped off the waiting list a lot quicker if you're not retaining another doctor.
But again, it's hard if you need those prescriptions. The virtual clinic has stepped in and the hopes are in the future that we can figure out a way to work with Family Health Team for an actual walk-in clinic.
ElliotLakeToday: I asked the question about doctors partially because Elliot Lake Retirement Living now has the go-ahead to start building the first new 90-unit residential building on its land west of Spine Beach. That would increase the need for more doctors. Do you agree?
Mayor Marchisella: In my personal view, I've seen the mines shut down, back in the mid 90's, many buildings being torn down. There are over 50 townhouses that were torn down. I've seen a lot of things disappear in a 30-year period and this will be the first time where there's actually a need because of our very, very low vacancy rate, and how quickly houses are selling, and the need for new housing.
This will be the first time in decades where there'll be a new building going up rather than being torn down. So, my personal view is, you can't get any more positive than that. Elliot Lake is becoming that place to be once again for all age groups. It's all a beautiful thing. Oh boy!
ElliotLakeToday: The business community of Elliot Lake and other area service industries have seen their operations go from "80" to "40" kph or less in many cases because of the State of Emergency declared to deal with COVID-19. The Emergency Management holds away. Is there anything the city can do to help these businesses survive?
Mayor Marchisella: Well, that's something that we have the virtual town hall meeting coming up for on Monday. And we're going to have a group of individuals from our Business Retention and Recovery Team get up there and give out the information as far as what's available for businesses both during this time and then in the aftermath.
As far as funding opportunities and what they can do, who they can contact; we'll have someone on behalf of the banks in town, Community Futures Development Corporation, ELNOS and so on.
These are all the funding partners for the business community who will be going through what is available right now and will be available in the future along with what you can do in the interim. It goes back to the virtual tours of your business. If you have a clothing store or, a shop like that, a lot of the bigger corporations have their online website where you can order online.
But locally, a lot of our businesses haven't gotten into that. There are resources available for you to change the way you do business and embrace the future. This is definitely the time for entrepreneurs to start looking outside the box and seeing what are the needs and how do we continue on with business through this environment.
Even when the virus is over and everything's said and done, this is still a new way for your business to sell more and get out to the population, rather than people ordering on Amazon. Potentially they could be ordering directly from your business in town.
ElliotLakeToday: Under the current defensive management protocols for COVID-19 and the focus on emergency management for both senior levels of government, all the long-range planning for Elliot Lake and the anticipated funding and application dates are on hold. How could that affect the future of the Recreation Hub or the Arts Hub?
Mayor Marchisella: It doesn't delay planning because there's still a lot of engineering and planning that needs to be done so, all of that is still underway. We're being told that budgets are still going to move forward a little bit slower than before, but the senior levels of government are picking up also and getting into the world of the virtual meetings.
It might be a short delay, but we still had planning to do and final pieces. I don't think the funding models have changed or the personnel have changed, so I still look forward to when the province releases their budget that we might see something there for us to move forward. And same with the replacement of the Civic Center suite (Arts Hub).
ElliotLakeToday: You're practically halfway through your second term as Mayor. What are your hopes for the rest of the term?
Mayor Marchisella: I'm not even concerned about the next term of council. I'm concerned about what we can get done during this term and specifically right now, protecting our residents, so that there is a next term.