The plan to bring the CKHA under a single board has taken a big step forward. 
The Erie St. Clair LHIN has given its blessing to the creation of one board, rather than the old tri-board system of governance.
CEO Ralph Ganter says the board voted on the issue Thursday morning, and support was unanimous.
“The scope that we have in our legislation is if we receive a voluntary integration, what we can do is we can stop it,” Ganter explains. “We had a fair amount of discussion as to how will the rural population be looked after in the future state, and we had a fair amount of information from the supervisor as to how a focus on the rural populations will be part of the DNA structure of the board’s structure in terms of their overall accountability.”
Ganter says there were 41 written submissions from the public, and majority were in favour of the hospital’s proposed single-tier governance structure.
A push to create an advisory panel made up of community members to provide input was shot down.