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Showing posts from January, 2015

Ontario elder care: fewer staff, more privatization, more private payment

New data  published by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (and based on a mandatory survey undertaken by Statistics Canada) indicates that staffing at Ontario long-term care facilities (LTC) falls short of other provinces.  The Long-Term Care Facilities Survey indicates that Ontario has 0.598 health care full time equivalent staff (FTE) per LTC bed. Canada (excluding Quebec, which is not included in the survey) has 0.641 staff per bed.   In other words, Canada as a whole has 7.2% more health care staff per resident compared to Ontario. This despite the relatively low number of higher paid nursing staff in Ontario. RNs and especially RPNs are underrepresented among all health care staff in Ontario LTC facilities, with RNs comprising just 11.5% of health care FTEs and RPNs comprising just 19.3% of health care FTEs. Across Canada the corresponding figures are 13% and 25.6%. Fewer RPNs to RNs: Ontario has a relatively low number of RPNs compared to RNs in LTC faci

Ontario fastest growing province. But public services get zip

Four of the big Canadian banks have come out with new forecasts for the Ontario economy and they all indicate the economy is improving.   The fall in the price of oil (and, with it, the Canadian dollar) is paying off for Ontario.    All four banks predict that Ontario will have the fastest growing provincial economy in 2015.  And all implicitly suggest that the Ontario government's Fall Economic and Fiscal Review is now out of date. (See the chart  below comparing bank and government forecasts.) On average the banks predict that the economy will grow 0.3% more more quickly in 2014 than the Ontario government predicted in its Fall Economic Outlook and Fiscal Review . Nominal growth (real growth and changes in market prices due to inflation) is predicted to grow half a percent faster.  Similarly, growth is predicted to exceed the government's forecast for 2015 as well, with real growth reaching 2.7% and nominal growth reaching 4.7%.   By 2015, the new bank f