Defend Public Healthcare

Another LHIN-based  initiative to restructure   " non-urgent patient transfers"  is underway.  Non-urgent transfers are ambulance-like transfers for patients from hospital to hospital, from hospital to long-term care, or from hospital to home. While the cost of these transfers often simply come out of the hospital budget, austerity has made this more difficult.   The latest restructuring project is in the North East  -- and is funded by the North East LHIN. Earlier this year , the government strongly endorsed a LHIN-wide plan for the South West.   As in the South West LHIN, t he North East project is supposed to develop a standardized approach to the delivery of non-urgent transportation services throughout the LHIN.   While EMS had provided much of the inter-facility transfers in the past, over the last 14 years that has changed, after the Mike Harris Progressive Conservative government introduced legislation in 2000 allowing...

Below is the recent submission of OCHU to the Standing Committee on Social Policy of the Ontario Legislature: The Ontario Council of Hospital Workers (OCHU/CUPE) represents 30,000 hospital and long-term care workers in 65 hospitals across Ontario. We represent food service workers, maintenance workers, housekeepers, Registered Practical Nurses, Personal Support Workers, administrative and office workers, and many more classifications. When Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs) were established, we feared that they would provide cover for the government as they proceeded to regionalize, centralize, privatize, and cut health care services. Unfortunately, this has proven accurate. A number of problems have arisen with the LHINs, but two stand out. First, they have been charged with centralizing, privatizing, and cutting local hospital services and, second, they have distanced elected government officials from decisions to reduce, privatize or centralize local health care ser...

Despite the lack of universal public insurance, U.S. governments actually spend much more on health care than Canadian governments.   Public sector health expenditure in the U.S.A. accounts for 8.5% of the economy, 7.9% in Canada, and 6.8% through the OECD (the club of 34 rich nations –  which, unlike the U.S.A., primarily finance health care through the public sector).   Indeed, the U.S. public sector spends more per capita on health care than any other OECD nation except Norway – $4066 per capita (in 2011).   The universal Canadian system spends $3183, while the OECD average is $2,499.   The main feature of the US system that distinguishes it from the systems in other developed countries is that it is highly privatized.   Moreover, it's not that the U.S. hasn't quite got privatization right:   basic problems remain despite multiple reforms to private health care. As the U.S.A. is the leading model of private health care provisi...

CUPE encourages health care workers to get an influenza vaccination if they can safely do so.   But making flu shots mandatory for health care workers is a serious intrusion on the freedom and personal autonomy of health care workers that may sometimes have detrimental effects on their own health.    Forcing people to take flu shots against their will may well undermine public confidence in vaccination programs, even vaccination programs with an excellent results and high safety standards.   Employers do not provide any sick leave to half of CUPE hospital workers.   So when those workers have an adverse reaction to the vaccination, they will lose pay.   Even those workers who do qualify for sick leave may be harassed by employers if they take days off as, under austerity, hospitals are increasingly driven by cost cutting and are sharply targeting sick leave for reduction. But, along with increased attacks on sick leave, some health care em...

Ambulances are spending a little less of their time offloading patients according to t he 2012  Ontario Municipal Benchmark Initiative (OMBI) report .   That is positive: time spent offloading patients to overcrowded hospitals could otherwise be spent responding more quickly to 911 emergency calls.  Nevertheless, we remain far behind where we were a few years ago. The OMBI study reports EMS data for 12 large Ontario urban municipalities --and also Muskoka. It indicates: The percentage of time spent in hospital Emergency Rooms (“offload delay”) has declined from 18.7% of total EMS time in 2011to 17.8% in 2012.   However, this is the same percentage as in 2010 and is up significantly from 2009 when paramedics spent 16.7% of their time waiting in ERs. Indeed, in 2007 paramedics spent 15.4% of their time in hospital ERs, and in 2006 they spent 13.3% of their time in hospital ERs.  In other words, since 2006, paramedics are s...

The Ontario government says the unilateral federal decision to limit the growth of the Canada Health Transfer will cost Ontario $8.2 billion -- $550 for every individual in Ontario. The Ontario Fall Economic Outlook indicates that 59% of the Ontario  health care funding increase this year comes from the annual increase in funding from the federal government via the Canada Health Transfer (CHT).  The federal transfer increase accounts for $752 million out of a total provincial health care increase of $1.272 billion.   (Another $181 million comes from the increase in the Employer Health Tax revenue, with not much coming from other Ontario based revenue sources, like income or corporate tax.)  The share of new funding paid for by new federal CHT funding is up from 56% in 2012-13 and 25% in 2011-12.  Federal CHT funding now provides 24.7% of Ontario provincial government health care funding. Unfortunately, the federal government has unilaterally a...

Ontario has the highest share of private health care expenditure in the country, according to data in a recent report from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).   Private expenditures in Ontario run to 32.3% of total health expenditures, higher than any other province (Saskatchewan is at only 24% private expenditures, Manitoba at 25.3%, and Alberta 27.1%).   Total public sector expenditure in Ontario in 2013 is forecasted at only 67.7% of total health care expenditure, significantly below the Canada-wide average of  70.1%.    While the Ontario public sector expenditure is down a tick from last year (67.8%) , the Canada-wide public sector average is up 4/10ths of a percent (from 69.7% to 70.1%).    This year, public sector expenditures in Ontario would need to increase 6.3% just to meet the Canadian average -- a $248 increase per person.  So it is perhaps not so surprising that private health expenditures are 5.3% highe...