A “growing and enormous” $4.8-billion funding gap is to blame for
declining care in Ontario’s acute-care hospitals, says the president of
the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions.
The damage for Windsor amounts to 234 fewer hospital nurses, 696
fewer hospital staff and a $74-million funding shortfall, when you
compare Ontario’s per-capita hospital funding to the funding in the rest
of Canada’s provinces, according to the union.
“You are being cheated out of the equivalent of 234 nurses, RNs and
RPNs,” Michael Hurley said at a news conference Thursday at the Royal
Canadian Legion Branch 255 in Riverside. The funding for acute hospitals
has dropped so below other provinces that patients in Ontario receive
six fewer hours of nursing care, he said. And the result is fewer
hospital beds and higher rates of medical errors, hospital-sourced
infections, and readmission of patients who were sent home too early.
“People don’t get the attention they need when they’re in a health
crisis,” said Hurley. “All these things together are the explanation for
the backlogs and waits people experience when they go to the hospital.”
Hurley’s union, CUPE, represents about 600 staff at Windsor’s two
hospitals — non-acute Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare and acute care Windsor
Regional Hospital, which earlier this year cited a $20-million budget
shortfall as it announced the elimination of 166 full-time equivalent
positions, most of those RNs (169 full- and part-time positions
according to their union). However, 80 of those FTEs are being replaced
by 80 RPNs. Before the cuts, the hospital had about 1,550 RNs.
Hurley is travelling throughout the province, to explain how over the
last decade Ontario’s acute hospital funding has been on the slide
compared to other provinces. In 2005-06, Ontario was “in the ballpark,”
with per capita funding of $1,112 compared to $1,159 for the rest of
Canada, Hurley said, citing figures from the Canadian Institute for
Health Information. Ten years later, Ontario’s funding was $1,396
compared to $1,750 for the rest of Canada.
Michael Hurley, president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, speaks to the media during a news conference at the Royal Canadian
Legion in Riverside on August 4, 2016. Dan Janisse /
Windsor Star
He said the numbers extrapolated for Windsor are conservative, taking
into account only the City of Windsor’s 211,000 population, even though
Windsor Regional’s patients come from all over the Windsor-Essex region
(population 389,000) and beyond.
Hurley said while Ontario did increase its funding for hospitals
during the last decade, it didn’t come close to accounting for
inflation, population growth and the aging population. This year,
hospitals received a one per cent increase, but their actual costs rose
4.5 per cent, he said. “So their budgets have been cut again.”
Windsor Regional declined to comment on Hurley’s assertions.
In a statement, Health Minister Eric Hoskins said his
government is is doing what citizens want — continuing to invest in a
health-care system that “puts patients first,” asserting that 94 per
cent of Ontarians now have a family doctor, and that wait times for some
procedures are among the shortest in the country.
This year, it’s increasing health funding by $1 billion,
a 2.1 per cent increase, and it’s increasing funding to hospitals by
$345 million this year. “In Windsor, (since 2003) we’ve increased
funding for local hospitals by more than $126 million — an increase of
almost 50 per cent,” said Hoskins.
He also said Ontario is investing additional millions into
home care, community health centres and home-based hospice and
palliative care, because people prefer to receive their health care at
home instead of a hospital.
Hurley said the province argues that while it has been
actively downsizing the acute care system, at the same time it’s
increasing investments in home care and long-term care, to “pick up the
slack.” But he said Ontario is actually spending less on long-term care
and home care than the rest of the provinces. He said Ontario’s high
readmission rates are a sign the system is suffering.
“So we have fewer beds, there’s tremendous pressure to get people out
of those beds and send them home, and often when they’re sent home they
haven’t been made well actually and they return to hospital for a more
lengthy and expensive readmission.”
Hurley said his council is calling on the government to fund
hospitals “at least” at a level that reflects their rising costs, to
stop reducing the number of beds and staffing, and to increase access to
the people who need it.
The people being hardest hit by this are elderly, he said, who often
have lived a long time without serious health problems, until they’re
hit with a health crisis that lands them at a hospital doorstep.
“First they queue up in an ER for hours, and if they’re going to be
admitted it’s likely a stretcher in a hallway,” he said. And once
admitted, there’s likely pressure to get them discharged before they’re
fully well, he added.
“For the elderly in particular they feel the brunt because there’s rationing going on, the beds are so scarce.” bcross@postmedia.com
