Defend Public Healthcare

The Ontario government is considering a ranking system that would award Ontario hospitals stars for good performance, while identifying poor performers, the  Ottawa   Citizen   claims . The “name-and-shame” scheme would be modeled after a short-lived British experiment.  'Under the proposed system, hospitals would be given a rating of as many as three stars for their performance in areas such as treating patients safely and effectively, reducing surgical and emergency-room waits and improving cleanliness. Another system under consideration would simply rate hospitals “excellent,” “good,” “fair” or “weak,” according to documents released to the  Citizen  under provincial freedom-of-information laws. 'The merits and pitfalls of a star-rating system were discussed in 2009 by a panel of 13 experts advising Health Minister Deb Matthews on the future financing and accountability of hospitals. However, it’s not clear if the government has a...

The Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare (MAHC) hospital is refusing to sign an "accountability agreement" with its Local Health Integration Network (LHIN), fearing it could lead to further service cuts and the loss of one of its two remaining sites (Huntsville District Memorial Hospital and the South Muskoka Memorial Hospital in Bracebridge). The hospital has already closed a third site recently. Board chair Sven Miglin explained “We do not believe that is the best intent for this community. This board firmly believes that Muskoka requires two acute care hospitals.” Local newspapers report that since 2009, the organization has found approximately $3.1 million in savings by closing beds, reducing staff, and shutting down the Burk’s Falls & District Health Centre. MAHC is currently forecasting a $4.2 million deficit for 2010/2011. The deficit is projected to grow to $6 million in 2011/2012. The organization’s working capital deficit is estimated at approximately $11.2 million...

It's hard to count the number of times Deb Mathews highlights the claim that the Ministry of Health and LTC is providing surgeries closer to home in her short letter on bariatric surgeries that is appearing in newspapers across Ontario today. If you count just the exact phrase "closer to home" it's only twice, but if you add in references to "here at home", "in Ontario", or "in the province" you get  nine hits. (I think. You can count for yourself  here .) While it is admirable that the government is trying to build capacity for bariatric surgery in Ontario (rather than ship patients off to the U.S. of A.), isn't it just a bit rich to hear so much emphasis on moving surgeries closer to home from a government bent on centralizing surgeries, emergency rooms, and other acute care services? The lady doth protest too much, methinks.  More evidence that centralizing services is a weak spot -- and the government kn...

The Association of Municipalities of Ontario is meeting and at least two municipalities are taking this opportunity to raise concerns about hospital cutbacks with the Minister of Health and Long Term Care, Deb Matthews. Lambton County Warden Jim Burns has indicated  that a delegation was to meet with Minister of Health Deb Matthews Monday to discuss recent cuts to the Petrolia emergency room, now closed from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. "It's also a really good opportunity to meet with provincial ministries.  This issue is vitally important to all of Lambton country," Burns said. "It touches almost every municipality. I know the minister is aware of what's going on, but I think it's very, very important to have that face-to-face chat with her." A City of Cornwall delegation led by Mayor Bob Kilger will be pushing for a solution to the Cornwall Community Hospital's bed shortage when they meet with health minister Deb Matthews, the Cornwall Standard Freeholder...

A darn good letter on the McGuinty government's  introduction of the LHINs from local CUPE hospital activist, Paul MacDonald. It was published yesterday in the Toronto Star .  Paul -- yes -- public sector union and community activists did do a pretty fair job campaigning on the problems associated with the LHIN model, and did so pretty much right from the get go.  And YES, it is nice to see that at least some of those problems are becoming more apparent to a broader section of the population now. So a thanks to all the local union and community activists who got the ball rolling! -- Doug LHIN system should be scrapped; Secret health unit meetings 'illegal,' Aug. 11 Toronto Star, Sat Aug 14 2010 Page: IN7 Section: Letter Re. Secret health unit meetings 'illegal,' Aug. 11 Not only should these secret LHIN board meetings be deemed illegal, the entire system of LHINs should also be deemed illegal. When an unelected, u...

As it turns out, the new (and much ballyhooed) emergency room wait time funding will not go to any ER with less than 30,000 ER visits per year.    This is just the latest in a series of Liberal government hospital policies that discriminate against smaller towns and cities (remember, for example, the ER closures in Niagara?). Lake of the Woods Hospital, a reasonably large hospital in Kenora, falls 4,000 short of the 30,000 visit minimum. But its June wait time figures are 9.1 hours for high acuity and 5.2 hours compared to provincial expectations of eight and four hours, respectively. Local hospital president Mark Balcaen showed some guts, took this on, and defended his community: "The public sees ER wait times the same whether they are in a small, rural, isolated community or are in a large metropolitan area....A long ER wait is still a long ER wait no matter the size of the community or hospital. The people of Kenora complain just as m...

With a C. Difficile outbreak dragging on since March at the Nanaimo Regional General Hospital in BC, some concern is now beinng expressed about hospital overcrowding: Infection control experts say they may need to cancel some non-emergency surgical procedures in order to get control of the ongoing outbreak of Clostridium difficile at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, though that option would be a last resort.....Overcrowding at the hospital continues to hamper housekeepers efforts to keep up with cleaning and it has put an additional strain on nursing staff, who have to follow meticulous protocol visiting patients.... NRGH continues to operate over capacity "almost all the time," Wale  (the hospital's Executive Medical Director of Quality) explained. ....Overcapacity creates too many opportunities for the spread of infection. "We'll need to review whether we'll need to start turning down the routine operations to keep this under control," Wale sai...

Well, when the full Canadian Press story on hospital funding came out this morning, Health Minister Deb Matthews was cited as claiming hospital funding went up last year by 5.6%. That's an awful lot more than previously reported.  The Accountability Agreements the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care signed with the Local Health Integration Networks set out an increase of $429 million (from $13.896 billion to $14.325 billion). That's an increase of only 3.08%. (For the  2008/9 and 2009/10 Accountability Agreements see here and here , pages 43 and 48.) If correct, that's an additional funding increase of 2.52% -- or  $350 million . So, was the Minister misquoted, did she get her figures wrong, or did some extra money role in? And if the latter, should we expect a similar bump up in funding this year as well? dallan@cupe.ca

Saad Rafi was recently appointed the new Ontario Deputy Minister of Health and Long Term Care. A long time senior civil servant, Saad Rafi was also the National Leader for Infrastructure at the giant consulting firm Deloitte Canada. As such, Rafi was a key proponent of Public Private Partnerships in Canada, one of the main ways corporations are trying to get their mitts on public sector dollars. While close ties between the corporate and government worlds is nothing new, critics might find this appointment a little odd: the previous Deputy bounced out of the Ministry after a scandal at E-Health that revolved largely around contracting out and privatization. -- Doug dallan@cupe.ca