Ontario Health Coalition Summits on hospital "fee for service" funding

Starting September 21, the Ontario Health Coalition (OHC) is sponsoring summits in six cities around Ontario dealing with significant changes proposed for Ontario’s hospitals.

The provincial government is moving towards a type of fee-for-service hospital funding (usually referred to by the government as "patient based funding", and by critics as "price based funding"). This is a potentially revolutionary change. The OHC notes that this funding system will encourage:

- Major hospital restructuring and cuts

- Centralization of services into fewer towns & pressure on the workforce

- A host of new administrative costs

- The end of community hospitals as we know them

This system has already been tried in the United Kingdom. There, it resulted in:

- Near-bankruptcies in large hospitals - ballooning administrative costs

- instability - privatization

- major cuts - demoralized staff

- chaotic health planning and the undermining of the national public health system

The schedule for the summits is as follows:

Hamilton: Tuesday, September 21, 10am-3pm Legion Branch 163, 435 Limeridge Rd. E

Sault Ste. Marie: Wednesday, September 22, 10am-3pm Legion Branch 25, 96 Great Northern Rd.

London: Thursday, September 23, 10am-3pm, CAW Hall Local 27, 606 First St.

Sudbury: Saturday, September 25, 10am-3pm, Legion Branch 76, 1553 Weller St.

Ottawa: Monday, September 27, 10am-3pm, Ottawa Public Library (Main Branch), 120 Metcalfe St.

Toronto: Tuesday, September 28, 10:30am-3:30pm, Metro Central YMCA, 20 Grosvenor St.

These summits are high priority events for hospital activists. The OHC web site is here.

dallan@cupe.ca

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