Defend Public Healthcare

The Globe and Mail ran a very interesting Saturday cover story on plans to increase fresh, nutritious, local, and hospital cooked food at Scarborough Hospital. It deserves quotation. "People in power have begun to recognize the link between health and good food, and believe it should be heeded in a place that caters to the ailing. Paradoxically, hospital patients are fed some of the nation’s cheapest food – each meal costs less than three dollars per person. Much of it goes into the trash: About 40 per cent of what kitchens dish out is rejected. Administrators everywhere are struggling with this and low patient satisfaction; many admit they would never feed their families the low-budget food their kitchens serve to patients.... "The most tantalizing prospect involves adding fresh or local foods and returning to scratch cooking. Most Canadian hospitals have long since given up the basics, such as distilling soup stock from simmered bones, in favour of convenient powdered

Niagara Falls city c ouncil tore into the Niagara Health System  Monday night, passing a resolution expressing outrage with the hospital's  handling of its reports of  a C. difficile outbreak at the Greater Niagara General Hospital,  the Niagara Bullet reports .  The outrage came after the hospital revealed that four people with C. Difficile had also died at the Greater Niagara  General site.   The deaths occurred between May 12 and June 16, but were not reported until June 23.     The report came long after the hospital began reporting an outbreak and deaths at the  St. Catharines General site. A hospital spokesperson, argued, “What needs to be emphasized is that there will always be patients with C. difficile in our hospitals and in our communities. It is not common practice for hospitals to report individual deaths directly to the public.”  A hospital vice-president added that the NHS notified the coroner about the four GNGH deaths but not the public until after the outbreak h

More trouble at Windsor's public private partnership (P3) long term care (LTC) project on the old Grace Hospital site.  This is the long delayed LTC project that is driving up the bed backup at local hospitals.   After much delay, the Ontario Minster of Health and Long Term Care had announced the private developer had come through -- on the (supposedly) final day of the deadline But, the  Windsor Star reports  that eleven days later, the guy hired to demolish parts of the building left and took his cranes with him.   He said he hadn't been paid. The Minister then told the Star that "this issue has nothing to do with the developer's ability to continue to move forward with the project.  This is an issue between the contractor and subcontractor." But the Star reports the owner of the cranes, was pretty clear that wasn't the problem.  "I haven't been paid, and the job's not started. So I'm moving my equipment out."  The equipmen

Bullet News in Niagara reports that  Niagara Health System (NHS) officials kept quiet the deaths of five C. difficile patients at hospitals in Niagara Falls and Welland, even as they struggled to bring under control an official outbreak at St. Catharines General where 10 elderly patients have died in less than four weeks. The Bullet adds that as late as Friday afternoon, NHS officials had made no mention of the deaths of four C. difficile patients at Greater Niagara General hospital and one at Welland County General hospital between May 12 and June 16.  The deaths were revealed later Friday – a full day after official outbreaks were declared at the Welland and Niagara Falls hospitals – by way of a single sentence at the bottom of a notice posted on the health system’s  website . “I just can’t believe it,” said Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor, who said he intends to contact Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews over the weekend to ask her to launch an investigation. “This warrants

Below is an excerpt from the British Medical Association report, Tackling Healthcare Associated Infections Through Effective Policy Actions .  This report was prepared under the auspices of the Board of Science of the British Medical Association.  The circumstances are similar to Ontario in many ways --  except that the bed occupancy is much higher here than it is in Britain, with Ontario bed occupancy rates currently running at about 97.9%.     Bed occupancy  Evidence from various retrospective surveys suggests that bed occupancy level is associated with HCAIs (health care acquired infections), and in particular MRSA. In 2005, the House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts noted that high levels of bed occupancy are not consistent with effective infection control policies.  A high bed occupancy may potentially impact in several ways, including: •increasing the proximity of patients and therefore the risk of direct and indirect patient-to-patient contact •making it more difficult

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

Today, the provincial government announced $6.3 million to care for 'alternative level of care'    (ALC)  patients at the Memorial site of the Sudbury Regional Hospital, at least for one more year.   The government characterizes this investment in 60 hospital beds as a way "to make it easier for patients to transition from hospital back home."    The hospital says the "surge capacity beds" will  offer post-acute patients "the assistive care services they require  before returning home safely."  The government  sees the beds as one part of a larger set of strategies and  i ndeed  increasing  community  and   hospital  capacities  is required to reduce the health care rationing reflected in hospital overloads, wait lists,  cancelled surgeries , and  ALC patients . Sharon Richer, OCHU Area 6 vice-president calls this initiative ‘one small step forward.’