Long term care funding increase: workers bear the brunt

Four months into the fiscal year, and we now know that long term care funding per bed is going up 1.47% in Ontario.

The LTC funding envelope that will get the biggest increase will be "Raw Food", which will see a 3% increase effective July 1. (The 3% is not counting a commitment by the government to continue extra raw food funding of 1.8% that was supposed to expire June 30).

Other funding envelopes that are connected to wages for long term care workers (raw food is not connected) will see a much more modest increase effective April 1: just slightly less than 1% for the "Nursing and Personal Care" and "Program and Support Services" envelops.

While raw food costs are not affected by LTC wages, these two areas most definitely are. In other words, long term care workers are being asked to bear the main role in containing costs.

Accommodation funding (the one envelope where owners can rake off a profit) will get a 2.1% increase effective July 1 (again not counting a commitment by government to continue extra accommodation funding of 1.4% that was supposed to expire June 30).

The 1.47% increase per bed falls short of the 2.8% total LTC increase promised in the provincial Budget document, so some growth in the total number of beds may be anticipated. Government Budget figures suggest that total provincial LTC funding this year is about $3.715 billion.

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...

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...

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