Skip to main content

Bed cuts, staff cuts, and privatization drive hospital crisis in Niagara

Here are some of the comments at a Health Coalition town hall meeting earlier this week about the problems at the Niagara Health System hospitals (as reported by the Welland Tribune):


John Degazio, a former housekeeping staff member at Welland hospital, recalled trying to draw attention to problems with the cleaning of hospital rooms after staffing levels were severely cut in the early 2000s. He said he recalled seeing bed linens that were supposed to be clean, with blood and feces stains on them. "At the end of it all, I was forced to leave (my job) for bringing up stuff that was contrary to people's health," he said.

Retired nurse Nancy Gladman said more than a decade ago, before cuts, there were enough beds to isolate patients with potentially contagious diseases. "It's just a mess," Gladman said. "Really, I wouldn't advise anyone to use any hospital in Niagara run by the NHS."

Registered nurse Cindy Forster, a Welland regional councillor and an NDP candidate in this fall's provincial election, said when a private company took over housekeeping duties at the hospital, staff were required to scour patient rooms in 20 to 40 minutes. It should take up to three hours to do a "terminal clean," she added, referring to a complete cleaning of a room.
Forster said recent efforts to increase public confidence in the health system will be fruitless, unless changes are made. "You cannot bring back any confidence to the public if you cannot provide timely quality care and improve the front-line situation for workers," she said.
Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousAugust 26, 2011 at 10:24 AM

    While the urgent care centre (UCC) is great for minor ailments, it will not look after serious or emergency care. More importantly than that it is likely the UCC will not likely be 24/7 after March 2012. The doctors who staff the UCC get paid by the Minister of Health. Their funding arrangement with the MoH expires March 2012. If it is not renewed, the doctors will likely no longer staff the UCC and the Niagara Health System (NHS) will use that as an excuse to reduce the 24/7 UCC to 14 hours.

    Pat Scholfield

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ford government fails to respond to 72% increase in COVID inpatient days, deepening the capacity crisis

COVID infections continue to drive up hospital costs and inpatient hospitalizations in Ontario. For the most recent fiscal year (April 1, 2022- March 31, 2023) hospital stays related to COVID cost $1.221 billion, according to new CIHI data.   This is about 4% of total hospital spending, creating a very significant new cost pressure beyond the usual pressures of population growth, aging, inflation, and rising utilization.   Costs for COVID related hospitalizations increased 22.2% in Ontario in 2022/23 from the previous fiscal year, rising from $999 million to $1.221 billion.  That rise is particularly notable as the OMICRON spike of late 2021 and early 2022 had passed by the the 2022/23 fiscal year.   The $222 million increase in COVID hospitalization costs came in the same year as the Ford government cut special COVID funding and, in fact, cut total hospital funding by $156 million.     In total, there were 60,653 COVID hospitalizations...
Post a Comment
Read more

The hospital crisis: No capacity, no plan, no end

While Canada has achieved universal public healthcare coverage, that does not mean conservative forces have given up trying to erode that coverage and expand corporate care where it does not currently exist. The battle has become particularly intense in Ontario under the Ford Progressive Conservative government, which is implementing serious cuts to the level of care and moving to bring in for-profit mini-hospitals. Inadequate Staffing.   Less and less of hospital spending is on staff.   Employee compensation as a share of hospital expenditures has consistently shrunk in Ontario. This is not some immutable law of hospital development.  It is in stark contrast with the rest of Canada, where compensation has become a larger share and now accounts for 67.1%. Hospitals in provinces other than Ontario now have 18 percent more staff per capita than hospitals in Ontario. Overall, if Ontario had the same staffing capacity as the other provinces and territories, there would be another...
Post a Comment
Read more

The long series of failures of private clinics in Ontario

For many years, OCHU/CUPE has been concerned the Ontario government would transfer public hospital surgeries, procedures and diagnostic tests to private clinics. CUPE began campaigning in earnest against this possibility in the spring of 2007 with a tour of the province by former British Health Secretary, Frank Dobson, who talked about the disastrous British experience with private surgical clinics. The door opened years ago with the introduction of fee-for-service hospital funding (sometimes called Quality Based Funding). Then in the fall of 2013 the government announced regulatory changes to facilitate this privatization. The government announced Request for Proposals for the summer of 2014 to expand the role of "Independent Health Facilities" (IHFs).  With mass campaigns to stop the private clinic expansion by the Ontario Health Coalition the process slowed.   But it seems the provincial Liberal government continues to push the idea.  Following a recent second...
Post a Comment
Read more