Just weeks before Toronto East General Hospital plans to shut down its outpatient physiotherapy clinic, residents are being invited to a town hall meeting to try to save the program.
The Service Employees International Union, community groups and health advocacy organizations are hosting next week's meeting.The hospital has said it will close the clinic April 1.TEGH is pulling the plug on the program, which costs $300,000 a year to run, in anticipation of the provincial government giving hospitals only a marginal boost to their budgets this year.Hospitals aren't legally required to provide out-patient physiotherapy services.Patients who use TEGH's clinic will have to rely on community-based programs. There are nine OHIP-funded and 15 private clinics in the hospital's immediate vicinity.The meeting to save the clinic will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday March 9 at the S. Walter Stewart Library at 170 Memorial Ave.