Different responses to Auditor General's report on contracting out

The Ontario Hospital Association is awfully repentant for the faulty hospital contracting out that was highlighted this past week by the Auditor General. Here's the OHA's release:

On behalf of Ontario’s 154 hospitals, the Ontario Hospital Association apologizes without reservation to all Ontarians for failing to meet their expectations with respect to the hiring and management of consultants. Ontarians have the right to expect that every hospital has the processes in place necessary to ensure that public funds are spent appropriately, and that these processes are always followed. We welcome the Auditor General’s report. We accept his findings completely, and are committed to implementing every one of his recommendations. Our focus now is on moving forward – to implementing the Auditor General’s recommendations, as well as the legislative, regulatory and policy changes proposed by the Government of Ontario. By doing so, we hope to regain the trust and confidence of the Ontarians we serve.

Not all the hospitals and LHINs did quite so much groveling, however. Ross Memorial Hospital (in Lindsay) was one of the 16 hospitals reviewed by the Auditor, and they defended themselves pretty much tooth and nail. And here's how the Queensway Carleton Hospital responded in a letter to the Ottawa Citizen: "We have operated under the principle that Ontario taxpayers deserve to have maximum value for their health-care dollars."

Robert Cushman, the boss of the Champlain LHIN, told the Ottawa Citizen that some of the "sole- sourced" contracts actually saved the LHIN -- and taxpayers -- money. "There were some mistakes made, but on the whole, it looks very strong. I'm not embarrassed about our record on this at all."

dallan@cupe.ca

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