Port Colborne considers legal challenge of Ontario hospital emergency room closure.

The City of Port Colborne passed a motion Monday night to seek legal advice on legal actions it might take regarding the shutdown of the local hospital's emergency room, the Tribune reports.

"We have made the move to seek that legal advice and take the appropriate steps," said Mayor Vance Badawey. Barbara Butters, a councillor for Ward 4 in Port Colbourne was even franker: "Do whatever it takes to make sure these charges get laid because there's no way those SOBs should be getting away with this," Butters said as citizens cheered from the public gallery.

Municipalities are playing are bigger role defending local hospital services. Good on them!

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

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More spending on new hospitals and new beds? Nope

Hospital funding: There is something off about the provincial government's Budget claims on hospital capital funding (funding to build and renovate hospital beds and facilities). For what it is worth (which is not that much, given the long time frame the government cites), the province claims it will increase hospital capital spending over the next 10 years from $11 billion to $20 billion – or on average to about $2 billion per year. But, this is just a notional increase from the previous announcement of future hospital capital spending. Moreover, even if we did take this as a serious promise and not just a wisp of smoke, the government's own reports shows they have actually funded hospital infrastructure about $3 billion a year over the 2011/12-2015/16 period. So this “increase” is really a decrease from past actual spending. Even last year's (2016-17) hospital capital funding increase was reported in this Budget at $2.3 billion - i.e. about 15% more th

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 33,778 full t

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