Raise the Hammer

Our community health service planners need to create real innovations in service delivery. They need to outgrow their dependency on expensive, un-strategically located, static buildings, and adopt a more nimble and responsive approach to delivery - not by cuts and consolidations, but by evolving the very nature of it to a more humane level that befits a developed nation.

What Hamilton needs are twelve state-of-art, bus size mobile health-clinics, that move and operate within our diverse communities. This new health delivery model could be managed from a unique central facility on the lands west and north of Hamilton General.

This new facility could have a central structure for administration, in-facility service and intern-learning requirements, with pods like an airport, into which mobile clinics can dock – giving it an entirely new dimension of imagery, flexibility, operability and scalability.

By taking family health practice into the heart of communities that are aging fast and who can ill-afford traveling by cars or buses, would drastically alleviate the trauma and anxiety that seniors associate with coming to the inhospitable and often inhumane environment via the parking trap, that mega-health complexes spawn around its facilities.

Cladding such buildings in glass or placing token green walls in lobbies does little to tone down the inherent harshness such large footprints generate. Whereas electric engines powering mobile clinics would generate less of an impact on our environment than any Leed certified mega-medical buildings ever could.

Residents could easily walk on their own, or be escorted/driven much shorter distances to these mobile clinic locations within familiar environments of their neighbourhoods, on predetermined schedules.

In the event of major calamities, the central hub design would be able to rapidly allocate resources to affected areas – while it would also be directly accessible by the active GO/Via rail corridor with a simple platform, which could be made operational in emergencies – thereby enhancing this strategic hub into a true regional facility.

We already have some form of mobile clinics in our community. We just have to expand on this concept and give it the legitimacy it deserves.

The form and connectivity of this new building/model could well generate an entirely new paradigm in family practice. It could also open up possibilities of bringing back that charm and healing comfort of a house visit by your family doctor.

Comment edited by Mahesh_P_Butani on 2011-07-27 21:03:22