Thank you for allowing me to put on this presentation. I have two daughters who suffered from eating disorders. When I realized the severity of this disorder, I felt that I had to get involved to help these patients get good care in a timely fashion.
With that in mind, I approached Dr. Paul Garfinkel of CAMH, who was one of the leading authorities in eating disorders in North America back in the early 1980s. Dr. Garfinkel was the president and CEO for the Centre of Addiction and Mental Health. After several meetings he expressed an interest in possibly partnering with my company, Avalon Centers Inc. However, he found that he could do nothing until there was a change in the OHIP policy. With that in mind, I decided to open a pioneering facility, Avalon Centers Inc. Eating Disorder Treatment Center, in the U.S. in hopes of bringing that experience to Canada to help our patients here when the time was right. This was a multidisciplinary approach to the treatment of eating disorders. We had a not-for-profit company called Avalon R and D and a for-profit one called Avalon Centers Inc.
To build a cutting-edge partial hospitalization program, our well-educated clinical team of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, nurse practitioners, nurses, and art and yoga therapists needed to build the most up-to-date protocol available. In order to formulate this, we extracted the necessary information from Dr. Garfinkel's vast research. Because of all of the clinicians involved, it was a very expensive process.
After this protocol was completed, I contacted Homewood in Guelph and talked to Dr. Eduardo Perez and April Gates. Over the next few months we had many friendly and informative meetings. When they issued a contract to partner with Avalon, we gave them our confidential protocol. After keeping it for at least four months, they then decided not to go ahead.
We attended many eating disorder meetings and were a member of the Eating Disorders Association of Canada, whose president was Dr. Robbie Campbell. At one such function in Toronto, Dr. Blake Woodside told us that there were probably 100,000 eating disorder patients in Ontario and that 18% of them died. The main treatment available was Homewood in Guelph, which at times had as much as a two-year waiting list.
OHIP did agree to send us patients now and then, depending on who was in charge, but if someone, like MPP Peter Kormos for instance, called, they pushed the patient through the system.
Bellwood, in Toronto, was also very supportive and did occasionally send us a patient.
Once in the U.S. we required a state licence from the Office of Mental Health. We are proud to say we were the first to get a licence as a free-standing facility. This was four and a half years before anyone got a licence in the state of New York. It was quite a feat for us. We established ourselves in three buildings, serving partial hospitalization, outpatient, and a two-shift fully supervised group home, with approximately 30 employees in total in under 4,000 square feet of space. We treated anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and some obese patients.
In time we worked with Kevin Flynn, who obtained a budget to get OHIP to do an audit on our largest treatment centres in the U.S., ourselves included at the Avalon Centers Inc. Buffalo location. Their audit showed we were as good as the finest centres and better than most in the U.S. and only two hours away from Toronto, but still OHIP was unable to provide us with patients.
We had many meetings with 20 senators and assemblymen to obtain their support in the U.S. I worked closely with Senator Joseph Bruno, majority leader, and Senator George Maziarz of Lockport. They promised us a new 20,000-square-foot centre ready to proceed. We even had fully comprehensive drawings and land picked out. Unfortunately, funds became scarce because of the economic downturn in the U.S.
Since this is a mental disease, and wanting to help patients with their insurance coverage, we went to Washington to help obtain mental health parity with the HMOs. In Washington I ran into a colleague, Kitty Weston, from Minnesota. I told her that I had contacted Senator Hillary Clinton’s office and that she was going to come out to Avalon. But then 9/11 occurred. As it happened, Hillary Clinton was in Washington. My wife and I were fortunate enough to obtain a meeting with her, and she gave us her full support.
We also had an agreement with Dr. Thomas Rosenthal, professor, and chair of the department of family medicine, Buffalo, New York, that all graduating doctors in western New York would be trained by our clinicians in eating disorders, because this is not part of their training.
Through my dedication and personal finances only, we are happy to say we were able to save approximately 1,000 lives in the 11 years that our multidisciplinary partial hospitalization treatment program lasted. Our experience there has shown that the young patients are more receptive to a free-standing facility rather than hospital settings.
Because of my experience, I would be pleased to assist in the process of setting up similar facilities in Canada.
This is respectfully submitted.