Defend Public Healthcare

The government is coordinating cascading efforts to move patients from organizations where more care is provided to where less care is provided.   For hospitals, government funding models and directives have long focused on removing less ill patients.  In long term care homes, the government quietly raised the criteria for eligibility for the waiting list. They also stopped providing the 'case mix measure' which was the key measure of the increasing illness and acuity of long term care residents. Regardless it is now obvious acuity in the homes is rising rapidly. But these restrictions on eligibility to hospital and long term care homes have also dramatically increased demand for home care services provided by Community Care Access Centres (CCACs).  CCACs are facing both more demand and much more ill patients.  The CCACs claim  the number of their high care need patients have increased 73% between 2009/10 and 2013/14. As a percentage of total patients, high car

What might happen if Tim Hudak gets his way and 100,000 public sector jobs are eliminated? Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) data shows that fewer personnel in hospital nursing units is associated with more problems for patients.  CIHI reports the number of personnel per patient (or, more exactly, "per weighted case" -- a measure which allows patients with different needs and conditions to be compared). CIHI also reports the number of "nursing sensitive adverse events" for surgical and medical hospital patients -- a measure of errors.   While austerity has meant that there has been a drive to reduce the staff to patient ratio, there still remains significant variation.  Some hospitals still have higher staffing ratios (if not for long). In total, there is data for 116 Ontario hospitals in 2010-11.   For hospitals that have been able to maintain at least 7% more staff per patient than the average, there was an astonishing 19.6% fewer "