Some hospitals are champions of local food (and some are just the opposite)

While Kingston General Hospital has plowed on with its plan to ship in meals manufactured (and sealed-up) in a distant factory, other hospitals are starting to make local food in their kitchens.

St. Joseph's Health Centre management in Guelph recently won an award from Ontario's Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation for being committed to high quality local food.

The satisfaction rate with food service at St. Joseph's rocketed to 87 per cent, compared to the provincial average of 60 per cent.

The local hospital dietary manager, Leslie Carson, told the Guelph Mercury that the main way she moved the opinion meter on her facility's food was by moving away from ready-prepared food.

Six years ago, when she arrived at St. Joseph's, ready-prepared food was all it served. Very little food was prepared on site. Good or bad, it had no soul.

Carson says staff took little pride in serving it. Having had nothing to do with its preparation, they had no ownership in it.

"I've found ready-prepared food to be expensive," she says. "Try eating it all the time. You'll go broke." Plus, with a lot of it being imported, the supply is vulnerable.

Thanks to the local-food movement maturing and distribution becoming more sophisticated, she's found a great deal of meat and produce can now be sourced from around Guelph.

As a result, about three-quarters of the 1,000 meals served by the facility today are prepared and cooked onsite by professional staff.

Local hospital union president Bonnie Weckworth confirms "we prepare up to 75% of all our food."

Unfortunately, not many other local CUPE hospital presidents can make that claim. But a survey of local CUPE presidents done by OCHU last year confirms that among those who can, food quality is consistently reported as high.

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

COVID infections continue to drive up hospital costs and inpatient hospitalizations in Ontario. For the most recent fiscal year (April 1, 2022- March 31, 2023) hospital stays related to COVID cost $1.221 billion, according to new CIHI data. This is about 4% of total hospital spending, creating a very significant new cost pressure beyond the usual pressures of population growth, aging, inflation, and rising utilization. Costs for COVID related hospitalizations increased 22.2% in Ontario in 2022/23 from the previous fiscal year, rising from $999 million to $1.221 billion. That rise is particularly notable as the OMICRON spike of late 2021 and early 2022 had passed by the the 2022/23 fiscal year. The $222 million increase in COVID hospitalization costs came in the same year as the Ford government cut special COVID funding and, in fact, cut total hospital funding by $156 million. In total, there were 60,653 COVID hospitalizations in Ontario in 2022/3, up from 47,543 in 2021/2.

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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