Defend Public Healthcare

Yesterday, I noted that the Ontario Hospital Association and the Ontario Association of Community Care Access Centres have now (very mildly) weighed in and noted that some of the alternative level of care  (ALC) patients are, in fact, waiting for "institutional" (i.e. hospital) services, particularly in the area of rehabilitation and complex continuing care. This, of course, is quite true -- more ALC patients are waiting for rehabilitation and complex continuing care  than other sorts of care  (except, of course, for long term care, which has masses of patients waiting for a bed). In fact the backlogs in these two areas represent a fairly high portion of total existing capacity.  About 327 ALC patients are waiting for rehabilitation -- that's equivalent to 14.1% of the total number of rehabilitation beds in the province (2,322).  Another 266 patients are awaiting complex continuing care, equivalent to 4.6% of the total number of complex continuing care beds (5,79

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,