Defend Public Healthcare

The good news is that London Health Sciences is only looking to cut $30 million this year.  They are actually facing a $47 million shortfall, but savings from the previous year mean that they only have to cut $30 million, the London Free Press reports.   The other, much smaller London hospital, St. Joseph's Health Care is shaving a mere $8 million off.   It's not entirely clear how the savings are going to be made.  St. Joe's talked about reducing the number of sutures used in operations, and both the hospitals made the usual blandishments about transferring the work to home care (God help them if they don't have some better ideas.)   Earlier, the hospitals had already moved to contract out 48 medical transcription jobs. London Health Sciences leader Bonnie Adamson added,  “We do not want to create fear and anxiety, but we do want to be candid about the realities that are expected to confront LHSC — and all major hospitals in Ontario — going forward. While

The London Free Press reports that a 'shortage' of doctors could close the London St. Joe's Urgent Care Centre on summer weekends. Fewer than half of the weekends in June, July and August are fully staffed so far, and a doctor shortage could extend into the fall, said Dr. Gary Joubert, head of emergency medicine in London. "I'm very disappointed . . . I want it to be fixed. The people of London expect the urgent care centre to be open," said Health Minister Deb Matthews,who is also a London MPP.   Matthews allowed that many hospitals face challenges staffing ERs, but added "I'm not aware of any that have cut their hours in such a drastic way," she said. St. Joe's disputed Matthews' suggestion that the closures are simply a St. Joe's issue: "It's important to remember that this isn't a single hospital issue, it's a city-wide issue," the St. Joe's CEO said.   London hospitals   started  using a private

Mental health hospitals in London and St. Thomas are losing 146 beds, with 76 going to hospitals in other cities and  70 being closed over three years. "In parallel to the reduction of beds there will need to be investment in the community to increase community capacity to provide care," regional health officials wrote. The LHIN CEO says the Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) won't close beds unless sufficient community supports are in place.  But the go-ahead from the South West  LHIN  came even though people with severe and persistent mental illness are already on waiting lists for care in the community. "More and more of our ill family members will be on the street, in jail or in the cemetery," one local citizen wrote when asked for feedback about the closures.

Ambulances and their patients waited outside London, Ontario emergency rooms (ERs) for more than 685 hours in March — that’s an average of one working paramedic crew unavailable for emergencies for every hour of every day that month, according to the London Free Press .  Based on Ontario’s 2009 benchmark figures of $146/hour/ambulance unit, the cost to sit and wait in that month alone exceeded $100,000. As usual, the blame is put solely on too many alternative level of care (or "ALC" ) patients in hospital beds, as if the ER backlog was simply a problem of bad management rather than government policy to squeeze hospitals.   No mention is made of bed cuts or dangerously high hospital bed occupancy levels.  But this is not simply a bad management problem.  It exists around the province at too many hospitals for that.   So, on the same day as the London report, a Durham report  indicates that ambulance 'off-load delay' in that region increased from 16,00