No empire building at Baffin hospital?

Dr. Mark Lachmann wants to increase the hospital’s autonomy. (Nunatsiaq News, Oct. 21, 2005)

“We would like to see the hospital separate out from the department of health and social services so that it’s not a mini-department, but an independent institution that’s able to respond to its own issues” Lachmann said.

Judas Priest! Here we go again. Three weeks on the job and he’s already preaching power politics and yet another administrative reorganization as the solution to all our problems.

We’re a community of barely 30,000 people!

How many ‘independent institutions,’ each duplicating their separate administration and overhead does he think we need in a jurisdiction of this size?

The Nunavut Implementation Commission (NIC) concluded in 1998 that those aspects of human resources, legal, finance, records, facilities, purchasing, training and, yes, even governance itself, that could be shared by all of Nunavut’s services, should be shared.

The former Nunavut health boards, including the Baffin Hospital, can trace most of their problems to their own petty bitter resistance to breaking down artificial bureaucratic barriers, fighting tooth-and-nail to avoid the sensible integration and savings and improved care that would come from shared integrated support functions.

Mr. Lachmann, service delivery begins with courtesy and respect for your clients and patients throughout Nunavut, including your colleagues in the so-called departments. Leave your extra-territorial preconceptions and interdepartmental feuds where you got them and start serving Nunavummiut as part of a team, not some little personal fiefdom.

We call it Pinasuaqtavut.

(Name withheld by request)
Iqaluit