Defend Public Healthcare

Following furors  in Windsor and Toronto , Health Minister, Deb Matthews has told hospitals not to charge patients waiting for a long term care bed more than $53.23 a day.  That's a lot less than the $1,800 a day that some wanted to charge, to help reduce hospital bed occupancy.  “It is completely inappropriate and unacceptable for any individual in this province in a hospital waiting for long-term care to be charged more than $53.23 per day,” Matthews  told the legislature Tuesday. These special charges have been around (and complained about) for some time, as jammed-up hospitals have felt increasing pressure to boot out patients.  So it's good to see the Ministers has finally felt compelled to do some thing about it.  Bed occupancy does need to be reduced -- but not by undermining medicare.   This is a good day for public health care.  dallan@cupe.ca

Sunnybrook Hospital vice-president Craig DuHamel conceded in the Toronto Star today (" Pay $1,800 a day or get out: Hospital ")  that  it was a  mistake  to have told a patient she might have to pay $1,800 a day to stay in her hospital bed.  The " bed-refusal " practice was an ill-conceived idea introduced sometime last year " as a last resort " to move large numbers of patients through the  hospital , he explains. " It's one of those things that, I think, you look at all kinds of strategies to help  free  up beds and not all of them are the best idea, " he says. Sunnybrook halted the practice late last year after the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly warned it contravened the Health Insurance Act. DuHamel says some staffers obviously didn't get the message. " It's definitely coercive, " says Jane Meadus, counsel for the advocacy centre, adding that the organization received about 160 similar complaints last year.

Oh brother -- it's worse than I thought.   The Toronto Star reports that for more than two months, a Woodbridge woman has been keeping vigil by her husband’s bedside in a U.S. hospital while trying to get him moved back home.But Kokila Joshi is being told by hospital after hospital in the GTA that there are no beds here.  The hospitals accept that there’s a problem, saying the flu season has overwhelmed their already strained capacity. But so far nobody has been able to do anything about Joshi’s plight. Bipinderoy Joshi, 67, suffered a cardiac arrest while on vacation in St. Louis, Missouri on Dec. 8. He has been in the SSM St. Joseph Health Center ever since. “If we had a bed available to safely accommodate this patient, we would do so,” said York Central hospital spokesperson Elizabeth Barnett.  "This flu season has overwhelmed hospitals and we have to take our patients who are in the emerg first,” said Scarborough Hospital spokesperson Tracy Huffman. “The challenge is our

CUPE Local 1590 and the Scarborough Health Coalition sponsored a great public meeting Thursday on bed and service cuts at Providence Healthcare hospital.  Local 1590 president Kevin Tyrell spoke to the crowd about the plan to shut down Providence hospital beds over the next four years, taking beds out through a program called "Transformation by Design".   The idea here is that in turn each hospital ward is closed down and renovated.  But when each ward is reopened, it has fewer beds! The hospital has already cut $2 million and is still $2.1 million in deficit.  Kevin and others at the public meeting spoke of the great job the hospital has done in the past and fears that good quality care will become a thing of the past as beds are chopped.  As usual, this is being done with little or no public consultation by the government or the LHIN.  Also as usual, the claim is that better home care will replace hospital rehabilitation services. But with home care cutbacks coming,