The role of our hospital in the life of our community cannot be underestimated. In analyzing the economic impact of the NHS plan through its recommended cost saving strategy, there exists a paradox -- that closing hospitals will have unrealized health, social and economic costs.

My question to the NHS: What are the true economic costs to our municipality?

Just as the availability of good schools is important to a community seeking to promote economic development, so is the presence of a viable hospital.

Does a hospital encourage existing residents, businesses and industry to remain in a community? Will it be a deciding factor if new businesses, industries and residents choose Fort Erie as their new home?

What about the aftermath associated with hospital closures? Will they include the suffering of elderly and children, the loss of local jobs, the loss of multiplier effect revenue, migration of area residents, impact on volunteer fire and emergency services, further declines in the local economy, and transportation problems?

Through perception or reality, the economic impacts cannot be ignored. What about the studies that suggest the closure of the sole community hospital will reduce the per capita income and increase the unemployment rate? What percentage of people polled found it important to live close to a hospital? Furthermore, what percentage would consider moving away if their hospital closed? What happens to physician retention and recruitment after a hospital closes?

Will Douglas Memorial Hospital turn into an under-utilized grey-field, lowering property values of surrounding homes? Can the NHS tell me definitively the closure of our hospital will not result in migration and loss of community physicians now and in the future and that there will not be an overall decline in the attractiveness of the community as a living environment?

If such is the case, the hospital's closure clearly could spell the economic demise of our town. Just as a hospital gives life to a community, it's departure can surely take it away.

Ultimately, families remember their hospital as a place "where little Sydney was born," "where Dad got well," and "where Grandpa died."

In most places they are an important part of defining what a community means to the people who live there. When we lose them, the cost is dramatic.

The NHS would like us to remain objective, dispassionate and analytical when preparing comments for their review. I would suggest no matter what drives your comments, be it your head or your heart, the NHS will be hard pressed to defend a position that is so fundamentally wrong on so many levels.

The Town of Fort Erie is now poised to become the second fastest growing community in the Niagara region. The role that Douglas Memorial Hospital played in achieving that milestone, cannot be underestimated.

Sandy Annunziata

Councillor, Fort Erie