Hospital cuts in 1.7% to 2.7% range

More hospital savings.

Joanna Frketich reports Hamilton Health Sciences needs to find $20 million to $25 million in savings, while Hamilton St. Joseph's is cutting $10 million to $12 million, and Burlington's Joseph Brant must cut $4 million.

In total, $34 to $41 million in cuts for Hamilton area hospitals.

That is in the range of 1.7% to 2.7% of the hospitals' budgets.

This is on top of earlier cuts. Over the past year the three hospitals found $30 million in savings. The government would no doubt focus on the increase in home care funding of $8.7 million -- but even that funding also had to cover Niagara, Haldimand and Brant. It also barely covers the cost pressures of inflation, aging, and population growth, never mind hospital cuts and the squeeze on new long term care beds.

Beatrice Fantoni reports Windsor Regional is laying off 34 Registered Nurses after the province put off over six years its promise to open 58 complex continuing care and rehabilitation beds. The hospital is now converting 30 acute care beds to complex continuing care, resulting in staffing changes and the layoffs. The RN layoffs will be partly offset by 17 full time and 13 new part time Registered Practical Nurse positions. The changes are supposed to save $1 million.

Windsor has long suffered from bed shortages.

The five million in cuts reported for Bluewater in Sarnia February 1 may result in the closure of a therapeutic pool (as well as other cuts). Apparently, such pools are rare in hospitals -- and the hospital's Chief Operating Officer reports "hospitals can no longer be all things to all people.”

It seems the media is beginning to doubt the government's suggestion that there are no cuts -- just savings and efficiencies.

Photo: McMaster, Hamilton Health Sciences by Tom Flemming

Comments

Too many public sector workers in Ontario?

Opponents of public services often try to portray the public sector as having grown disproportionately. In fact, since 1976, the number of public sector employees has not quite kept pace with the population. In 1976, the number of public sector employees in Ontario as reported by Statistics Canada averaged 830,800. By 2012, the number had increased to 1,330,700 -- a 60.2% increase. That sounds like significant growth -- true. But the population has increased from 8,413,779 in 1976 to 13,505,900 in 2012, a 60.5% increase. In other words, population growth has run slightly ahead of the growth in public sector employment. In 1976, close to 10% of the population worked in the public sector. It stayed pretty much this way until the Mike Harris government came to power when it dipped below 9%. It returned close to the historical range in the last six years or so, declining in 2012 to below the 1976 averag...

Huge cuts in public sector wages predicted

The Ontario Financial Accountability Office (FAO) says that, with inflation, real wages in the public sector will decline 11.3% over the three year period 2021/2 - 2023/4 . This would radically deepen the trend towards lower wages during the last ten years. The FAO reports that since 2011, the average annual salary for the Ontario public sector employees (defined here as employees of schools, colleges, provincial government, provincial agencies, and hospitals) has increased by $10,385 -- or 1.6 per cent on average annually. This is the lowest increase of all the sectors and lower than inflation, which averaged 1.8 per cent per year. Over the ten years that would be about a 2% pay cut. The FAO reports that wage settlements were the lowest in the provincial public sector over the last decade: Hospital Wages Especially Challenged: The FAO predicts hospital wages will increase even less than in the public sector -- just ...

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...

Defend Public Healthcare

Search This Blog