Bad health care practices follow bed cuts

Since closing 30 beds designed for non-acute patients in March, the number of non-acute patients occupying acute care beds at Health Sciences North in Sudbury has more than doubled.

OCHU/CUPE members protesting Sudbury bed cuts

In February only 44 non-acute care patients were occupying acute care beds. But since the bed closures that number has increased: to 77 in April, 96 in May, and now 100 this week.

In other words: the Liberal government cut 30 beds and now 100 patients are waiting for more appropriate services, a 127% increase compared to before the cuts. Every day an extra 56 patients are waiting in more expensive hospital beds set up to provide services for much more acutely ill patients.

It's hard to believe this is effective health care -- or that it is going to save money.

As a result of the hospital back-ups there is also nowhere to care for new patients. Currently about 25 patients admitted via the emergency department await beds. The Sudbury Star reports that the hospital has reduced the number of scheduled surgeries per day from 19 to 15 (a 21% reduction) after 30 surgeries were cancelled last month when there was no beds for the patients to recover in. Nevertheless, the Hospital reports that four surgeries have been cancelled this week due to the back ups.

The plan is to shut another 30 such beds in March. But a peer review of the hospital headed by Murray Martin of Hamilton Health Sciences is due out October 9.

Could this lead to a pause in the bed cuts? This bears watching -- but I wouldn't bet on it given the Liberal government's commitment to cuts. The focus may simply stay on managing the crisis, rather than ending it.

Comments

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 ...

Are health care administrative expenses out of control in Ontario?

The Progressive Conservative government has justified its health restructuring plans with the claim that administrative expenses are much higher in Ontario than in Canada. When introducing the reforms, health minister Christine Elliott claimed , “Over the last five years, Ontario has spent 30% more than the Canadian average in administrative expenses on its health care system.” Elliott did not indicate her source of information. Presumably, however, the Progressive Conservatives are referring to the CIHI simplified and user friendly “ Your Health System ” graphs. Those graphs show “administrative expenses” in Ontario at 5.8% in Ontario while it is 4.5% in Canada. This CIHI measure is actually fairly narrowly defined. It is the percentage of “the legal entity’s” total expenses associated with the administrative, finance, human resources and communications functional centres. However “the legal entity” used for this estimate is [1] only...

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...

Defend Public Healthcare

Search This Blog