Defend Public Healthcare

Long-term care act can't be overridden Windsor Star Tue Feb 22 2011  Page: A7  Byline: Jane E. Meadus  Column: Letters to the editor  Re: Crisis designation 'too little, too late,' by Sonja Puzic, Feb. 17. Gary Switzer, CEO of the Erie-St. Clair  Local Health Integration  Network, announced recently that the LHIN has designated area hospitals as being in " crisis " mode, allowing hospital patients increased access to long-term care home beds. While the LHIN does have such authority, the statement that this measure means that " patients who don't accept the first available long-term care bed in the community will face a $600 per day fee to remain at the hospital " is not in accordance with the law. Under the regulations to the Long-Term Care Homes Act, when hospital patients are designated as " crisis, " they move to the top of the list for their home choices. There is no requirement for them to accept beds in homes they have no

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.

Ontario acute care hospital admissions have declined rapidly since 1995-96.  Between 1995-6 and 2008-9 those admissions declined from 1,149,929 to 982,624.  That's a 14.5% decline (a little bit more than the Canadian average of 14.1%). Ontario also has the lowest (age and sex standardized) acute inpatient hospitalization rate of any province or territory in 2008-9.  And Ontario has the lead by quite a ways.   For the data on this, see the Canadian Institute for Health Information report here . Despite this (and problems with high bed occupancy), Ontario hospitals continue to be the biggest focus for government health care cutbacks. dallan@cupe.ca

Jane Meadus, a lawyer with the Toronto-based Advocacy Centre for the Elderly,  says  it's illegal for hospitals to charge patients $600 per day, even if they refuse to leave for a bed in a nursing home.   Meadus said that under the Health Insurance Act, the maximum a hospital can charge a patient awaiting placement is $53.23 per day.  "That doesn't change in a crisis," she said. ( The $600 fee planned by Windsor hospitals comes with a designation of a hospital bed crisis in the area.)   She said the demands for extra payment come when patients and their families are particularly stressed and vulnerable. Windsor Regional Hospital president and CEO David Musyj said he's aware of the group's position on the hiked fees, but the new policy won't change.  "I disagree with her interpretation of the regulations," said Musyj. He said the $600 fee is not meant to be a revenue generator or meant as a threat to patients to free up beds, but is designed t

The health care funding crisis is coming at the Liberal government from every direction lately, even from friendly newspapers.   The Toronto Star  has started a series on home care, showing how patients are falling through the cracks at a time when hospitals are discharging patients “sicker and quicker”. The  Star  found numerous stories of seniors denied access to home care or just given a few paltry hours.  A 90-year-old Scarborough woman with dementia is told she does not qualify for home care. A daughter in Stouffville begs to keep a few home care hours for her 86-year-old father who is paralyzed by a stroke. In Aurora, a woman who cares for her chronically ill husband, was refused home care after she broke her back. The series started Saturday ,  and continued Sunday  with more to come later this week.  Take a peek.  It seems it never rains, it simply pours:  The  Peterborough Examiner also ran a front page story yesterday detailing the trials of getting home care

There is a pretty simple explanation of the Windsor Essex hospital bed crisis: the provincial government has forced the closure of a lot of hospital beds in the area. In 1995-96 there was 1,183 hospital beds at the three hospitals in the area. Now, Windsor Regional Hospital claims 669 (for the year ended March 2010); Hotel Dieu, 305 ; and Leamington District something less than 88 .  So now there is somewhere less than 1,062 beds in Windsor Essex. That is a 10.2% reduction in the number of beds. And this probably underestimates the cuts.  Leamington District, as far as I can find, does not report the current number of beds, but rather reports that they had 88 beds several years ago and then cut staff and beds.  Moreover, the start year noted above, 1995-96, was already six years into the massive beds cuts during the Harris and Rae governments.  Indeed, by 1996, about a quarter of the province's beds that existed in 1990 were gone. It's possible that Windsor Essex e

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