Windsor Regional Hospital's new chief of staff believes some of the problems facing hospital care, stem from problems in the overall health care system.
Dr. Wassim Saad was born and raised in Leamington, went to the University of Windsor and has worked in Ottawa, Toronto, London and Thunder Bay.
He says he fully supports a new acute care hospital for the region and believes that would help to solve some of the health care issues facing residents in Windsor-Essex — he also think it would help to attract more doctors to the region.
According to Dr. Saad, one of the biggest challenges facing Windsor-Essex is residents needing to travel elsewhere for services, which he says doesn't happen in other cities, adding it creates a snowball effect when a region is short of family doctors because it means the family doctors who are here, are overworked and some people can't find family doctors...
"We still have some services that are not yet available to our community like cardiovascular surgeries that comes to mind, but that is one of the things as chief of staff I want to see expand and grow," he says. "I don't want patients who live in this community to have to travel anywhere else and I think that is the biggest difference between Windsor and any other community."
Dr. Saad says getting more doctors to this region would go a long way in solving some of the health care problems.
"Recruiting people to the area, I think is going to be very important because you can decrease the workload and then if one physician is looking after ten patients instead of 30 patients, it just naturally flows from there that the quality of care is likely to increase as well."
Despite the challenges facing the local health care system, Dr. Saad says Windsor-Essex needs to play with the cards we've been handed.
"We all know the system is at its breaking point, some people feel it is already broken," he says. "My job from my perspective is to control what I can control and making sure that the clinical services are covered by physicians who are qualified to do the work."
In comparing healthcare in Windsor to other communities, Dr. Saad says every community has its positives and negatives but the people in Windsor-Essex are outstanding. Saying, "From the nurses to the staff to the administration — they are so dedicated."
Dr. Saad is replacing the retiring Dr. Gary Ing who will stay on to complete various projects until the end of September.