Defend Public Healthcare

The announcements of new "home and community care" funding (which started last week) continue, this time for the Ottawa area. Home care activists First the good news.  The $7.15 million announced for the Community Care Access Centre (CCAC) amounts to 3.74% increase over the CCAC budget set out in 2011-12 Champlain LHIN performance agreement . The Hamilton-Niagara CCAC increase announced last week was 3.25% .   So this is a little higher, albeit short of the 4% home and community care funding increase promised by the government. Moreover, the overall announced increase of $11.1 million falls well short of the 4% increase for home and community care announced by the government.  If you add together all the items in 2011-12 Champlain LHIN accountability agreement that easily fit in to “community and home care” (i.e. the CCAC, Community Support Services, Assisted Living Services, Community Health Centre, and Community Mental Health line items), the total is ...

Today, in the Ottawa Citizen , the Queensway Carleton Hospital reports a big decline in the number of  "ALC" patients, down  from 50 patients a day to 20 or 25.  That is a  50% to 60% decline. Queensway Carleton Hospital The story highlights the home first program (where seniors get intensive home care for up to two months) and a decision not to discuss LTC options with patients, or fill in LTC applications.    It sounds like a more important explanation of the ALC decline was the creation of 24 "restorative" beds at the hospital.    The patients in those beds are the same sort of patients who were formerly ALC (i.e. not requiring acute care but still not ready to go home).   With the creation of the restorative beds program t here are now  special programs  to help these patients become fit and active while they fully recover in hospital. With this program, these patients are no longer in acute care beds and are no ...

Sudbury hospital officials expect the shortage of hospital beds in the city will force 4 surgeries a day to be cancelled.  Thirty have been cancelled this month. Dr. David Boyle, the hospital's medical director of surgical services told the CBC he's frustrated because his department has toiled away at reducing surgical wait lists. “We've worked hard over the last two years to improve all of our wait lists. We still have quite a lot of stressors on our wait list compared to the other parts of the province."   Boyle said the problem lies in the absence of a home care strategy for seniors. Earlier this year, the hospital (Health Sciences North) was forced to cut 30 beds. The government is expected to require the hospital to cut another 30 beds next March.   Meanwhile, Betty Kutcha, CEO, of the Erie-St. Clair Community Care Access Centre told the Chatham Daily News , that personal support home care is becoming more limited as the agency is required to direct it...

Job cuts at the  Élisabeth Bruyère hospital in Ottawa are now set at 28.  That's up from three weeks ago when  the word was that twenty caregiver jobs in rehabilitation and palliative would get the boot.  The  Citizen   reports that  orderlies working in the rehabilitation and palliative-care departments will be among the hardest hit with six other support staff and two managers also affected. Like other health care bosses, the  Bruyère  boss  blamed  the (modest) wage increases won by unionized  hospital employees (while admitting that the hospital was increasing the salaries of non-union staff: “We have to do the same thing if we don’t want to lose people.”).    One might have thought he might have focused on the funding crisis.  Bruyère is expecting a 0.2-per-cent funding increase and the hospital has identified $2.6 million in cuts on the hospital's $130 million budget. Another $500,000...

For the last ten years, the Ottawa Hospital had contracted out housekeeping at its General site to a large, foreign-based corporation.  But as of May 13, those 314 housekeeping staff were brought back to work as employees of the Hospital. CUPE has long raised concerns about the effects of the privatization of housekeeping.   Apparently, hospitals can rethink even long term privatization initiatives.   Congratulations to CUPE Local 4000.    

The Ontario government's squeeze of hospital funding announced in the March provincial Budget is hitting home.   Yesterday, the Ottawa Hospital told the media that almost 100 positions will be cut as a result of the hospital's $23 million deficit (on a $1 billion budget).   No formal announcement from the Hospital is on their web site today. Reportedly, over sixty positions will be cut in from the Hospital's office workers, mostly in medical records.  The hospital claims the cuts will mean no cuts in service.   Right.  Unfortunately, these days, that is the usual theme hospital administrators repeat  -- as they implement cuts.  (I'm betting the government is quite pleased with that line.) The  Ottawa Citizen  reports the Ottawa Hospital remains unsure about its financial situation since the Liberal government has delayed telling Ontario hospitals how much funding they will receive in 2012-3.  The Citizen reports that under a ...

Here's a new twist:  Ottawa Hospital  is telling staff members with tattoos and piercings to cover  up -- even if they aren't dealing with the public or food.  A new dress code policy implemented last month requires all staff to conceal visible tattoos and remove "excessive" body piercings.  "I have no problem with the ( hospital asking) people with piercings to remove them if they're in food preparation, or if they're in direct patient care, but other than that, I think it's up to individuals to decide what jewelry they want to wear," CUPE Chief Steward Steve Driskell told the Ottawa Citizen .  Some workers who have defied the dress code have been given verbal warnings. Others have been sent home, Driskell said.   dallan@cupe.ca

A report  from the Ottawa Citizen  indicates that the Queensway-Carleton Hospital is considering cutting elective surgeries for up to 10 weeks beginning this summer to deal with a $2 million budget shortfall, . C hief executive Tom Schonberg  cautions that the plan is based on a worst-case scenario -a one per cent funding hike -and could change as hospital funding allocations become clearer over the next two months. Health Minister Deb Matthews applauded the hospital.  "The Queensway-Carleton Hospital is doing exactly what they should be doing.  They're being responsible. They're developing a plan to work within their budget. ...(Not performing surgeries) when staff are on holidays -that seems like a reasonable strategy to me." The McGuinty government has over the past two years delayed telling Ontario hospitals how much funding they would receive until June or July, well into the new fiscal year, which started on April 1. Even the province-wide 1.5% base fu...

360 cases.  That's a new record of cases for the antibiotic resistant superbug VRE at the Ottawa Hospital. It is a sevenfold increase from the fifty cases last year at the same hospital.  In fact, this is a very large number of cases at any hospital  for this sort of superbug   .  The Ontario government reports that for October 1 to December 31, 2010 there was a grand total of eight cases of VRE in all Ontario hospitals.  That's a a rate per 1,000 patient days of 0.00 .   VRE (vancomycin-resistant enterococci) is less well known than other superbugs like C. Difficile or MRSA, but it is of particular concern.  Reportedly, it is the first  strain of clinically important bacteria that is resistant to all available antimicrobials. Like many other facilities, the Ottawa Hospital blames overcrowding for the outbreak.   Overcrowding at hospitals hampers housekeeping efforts to keep up with cleaning and puts additional str...

Demand for the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario's (CHEO's) 19 psychiatric-care beds has been so great that the hospital has been closed to voluntary admissions; the eight beds for teens at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre are also full, the Ottawa Citizen reports . "We're running out of places where we can put these patients," said Dr. Simon Davidson, CHEO's chief psychiatrist, who's also chief of the Royal Ottawa's specialized services for children and youth. He pointed to the bed shortage as a symptom of the province's chronically underfunded mental-health services, which quickly come under strain when demand surges.  "When we experience an increased demand like we're having now, we are very close to having serious difficulties coping." Davidson said it's too soon to say how much longer non-urgent patients could be expected to wait. CHEO officials are nervously eyeing the months ahead out of fear the winte...

The CBC reports an alarming increase in the number of hospital patients waiting for long-term care, noting that the Ottawa Hospital says the problem has increased by 30 per cent in the past five years. Cameron Love, vice-president of the  Ottawa Hospital, pretty much captures the government's current approach:  hospitals need to assess whether patients can go home, instead of moving them towards long-term care.  Indeed, the government  is reluctant to fund new long term care beds and its strategy is officially called "Aging at Home". Not everyone thinks the strategy has been a success:  "Clearly the LHINs have bungled the Aging at Home program," said Ontario Conservative leader Tim Hudak in August .  "Despite putting a quarter of a billion dollars into the strategy, we've actually gone backwards with wait lists for long-term care homes increasing by over 4,000 people and waits for emergency rooms well in excess of provincial s...

Sault Ste. Marie has won  its battle to maintain funding for seven mental health beds the Sault Area Hospital was scheduled to lose when it moved to its new facility this spring.  The move is expected to save three or four jobs at the Sault Area Hospital and keep service at current levels. Other modest victories were achieved in Ottawa . The Ministry of Health and LTC has agreed to fund four beds for babies who need extra care at birth at both the Montfort Hospital and Queensway Carleton Hospital. The annual cost of the initiative totals $2.6 million. (Perhaps I'm just a cynic, but we are getting closer to an election, aren't we?) Less helpful was an editorial in the St. Catharine's Standard .  The piece notes that the Regional Municipality of Niagara will likely consider the Ontario Health Coalition's proposal that the province investigate the Niagara Health System (the NHS -- which has made a hash of things by cutting Emergency Rooms among other...

A couple of pics from the recent OCHU / CUPE Local 2875 rally to stop bed cuts at the Queensway Carleton Hospital in Ottawa. It was a great day. (And thanks for the pics to Louis and Local 1974 at Kingston General!)  Also -- the People's Healthcare Coalition, has collected more than 5,000 signatures calling for an investigation into what led to the decision to close the emergency rooms at Port Colborne and Fort Erie hospitals in Niagara. "We've had tremendous support so far," Coalition representative Pat Scholfield said, noting she collected several hundred signatures at the Market Square Friday morning. "Our goal is Queen's Park".