The provincial Ombudsman has followed up on his damning report on the privatized, non-ambulance patient transfer industry. The Mike Harris Progressive Conservative government privatized the patient transfer industry at the turn of the century, moving the work over from Emergency Medical Services (ambulance services). Two years ago, however, the Ombudsman and the CBC reported major problems in this newly privatized industry, including threats to patient safety and working conditions. Ontario residents would be better off taking a taxi to a hospital than one of the privately owned vehicles used to transfer hundreds of thousands of non-critical patients each year, provincial Ombudsman Andre Marin concluded . On July 16, 2013, the Ombudsman followed up on his earlier report, stating that “ Two years after promising to regulate the non-emergency medical transfer industry to protect the hundreds of thousands of patients transported annually in thes
Notes from Leftwords -- Doug Allan