Friends of the Ajax Pickering Hospital

68 Hills Road, Ajax, Ontario L1S 2W4

December 7, 2007

Rik Ganderton

President and C.E.O.

Rouge Valley Health System

Rouge Valley Centenary

2867 Ellesmere Road

Toronto, Ontario

M1E 4B9

Dear Mr. Ganderton,

At your meeting with the Friends in October, 2007, you invited the Friends to raise with you any items of concern. Hence, this letter.

For some time now the Ajax Pickering Hospital has not had a cardiologist at this site. The last cardiologist at Ajax Pickering was Dr. Jason Burstein. Dr. Burstein relocated to Centenary about a year ago. Since that time there has been no replacement.

Consequently, the Friends request that a cardiologist, or cardiologists be recruited immediately to serve the patients of the Ajax Pickering Hospital. During the time you are in the process of recruiting cardiologists for the Ajax Pickering Hospital, we ask that you request the cardiologists based at Centenary to provide necessary in-patient and out-patient cardiac consultations at the Ajax Pickering Hospital on the days they supervise cardiac diagnostic testing at Ajax, so that cardiology services at both sites are equitably distributed. As Rouge Valley is a Health System, the balancing of services fairly is vital to the credibility of the system.

The reasons for the Friends request are: First, patient safety. The absence of cardiologists could endanger lives. Secondly, as you are aware, the Ajax Pickering Hospital is the only hospital between Oshawa Lakeridge and Centenary serving the huge growing populations of Ajax, Pickering, Whitby, and West Durham with a mixture of young people and seniors. Thirdly, the Ajax Pickering Hospital has a huge Emergency Department. That Emergency Department will continue to grow as the population increases, and the Phase One development is completed. Fourthly, with the great distance between Centenary and

the Ajax Pickering Hospital, over very busy highways that are subject to gridlock at any time, and with no convenient inter-regional public transit system, medical services such as cardiologists must be close at hand and reliably available for our communities that are under-serviced now.

The Friends are willing to meet with you at any mutually convenient time to discuss this matter in the search for a timely solution. The Friends will assist in any way we can to help solve this problem.

Thank you so much for your consideration of this matter.

Sincerely,

Yvonne Bosch Bill Parish

Co-Chair Co-Chair