Defend Public Healthcare

An Ottawa Citizen story  suggests a new, low-tech way of dealing with aging patients in hospitals: restorative care.   Here, through a modest increase in hospital and home care resources, the Champlain LHIN is finding that more patients can return home and that wait lists for long term care can be reduced. Officials point to the new approach - from rehab to home - as a sign that Eastern Ontario hospitals are finally moving away from a well meaning but paternalistic attitude that assumes all older patients decline irreversibly, when some of them just need a little extra support to help them recover their day-to-day function. Queensway Carleton officials view the restorative-care program as a better, more cost-effective way to treat seniors, who make up more than half of all the hospital's patients.... Under the program, a specially trained nurse patrols the hospital looking for elderly patients who have been given no obvious plans for discharge, but are considered medically

The Association of Municipalities of Ontario had a workshop on interest arbitration  at its annual  conference yesterday:  “ Arbitration and the Ability to Pay” .   Municipalities use interest arbitration to settle collective bargaining disputes with police, firefighters, and, sometimes, paramedics.   The municipalities, it seems, are not happy with interest arbitration. As one delegate said:  "It's a cookie-cutter process and the cookies suck." But then again, are employers ever happy?  Workers also have to live in a cookie dough world -- but spend less time whining for caviar.   In its report on the arbitration workshop, the London Free Press  quotes Dalton McGuinty as stating that it would be "unwise" to "finagle with the arbitration system."   That's a positive step forward. Globe & Mail columnist Adam Radwanski had speculated in May that the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives would bend the arbitration process to favour employ

Dalton McGuiny told the Association of Municipalities of Ontario that a Progressive Conservative government would mean  that Ontario municipalities  will find themselves back in the Mike Harris days of cost cutting and downloading, the Toronto Star reports . Cost cutting for sure.   But I am not sure how McGuinty's funding plan is any better. According to the Auditor General, the funding plan of the Liberal government would see  a sharp reduction in overall spending increases ( from 7.2% over the last eight years to 1.8% for the next two)  That's quite a tumble, to a level of increase that is less than the government's inflation forecast (and 60% of the inflation rate right now). Programs outside of health care, education, post secondary / training, and social services will see decreased funding: reducing spending 1.8% annually for Justice and 5.6% annually for all other programs. That is one heck of a hit for Ontario municipalities, who depend on cash from the

Don Drummond has sent a message that his Commission on Reform of the Public Services will put a hard squeeze on health care. A Toronto Star columnist reports that he said up to 25 per cent of it is wasteful, “so obviously that’s the kind of stuff you go after, that would be the least painful stuff.” Speaking of public services more broadly Drummond added, “Somebody is going to have to do something, and it’s going to have to be fairly forceful. Hopefully, it will be strategic and intelligent, and it will minimize any kind of pain — and there likely will be some (pain) involved with it,” he says. “My guess is that come Oct. 7, somebody is going to be knocking on our door asking for ideas While they are talking up another, more pleasant, post-election world, Liberal and PC spending plans after the election will require pretty draconian cuts to public services, so they may well rely on Drummond -- after the election --  to justify all the blood on the tracks.  I'd like to

The House of Commons Treasury Select Committee in Britain " rubbished " PFI (i.e. Public Private Partnerships or "P3s") on Friday, but the problems for P3 hospitals are only just starting. The business friendly Sunday Telegraph has gotten its mitts on government documents which indicate that the cost of hospital P3 deals signed since 1997 "will swell by almost one quarter from 2011 to 2014". This will mean that the hospitals are going to have to find (what is euphemistically referred to as ) "efficiency savings".  The Telegraph story Hospitals to cut services to pay for £60bn private finance deal  reports that the hospitals are already drawing up the plans for the required "savings". Payments by hospitals to P3 corporations  will grow by almost £1 billion during the next payment review from 2011 to 2014. Of a total £60 billion debt owed to the P3 corporations "less than £5 billion will have been paid to them by the time of

Contrary to the angry  suggestion of the Ontario Progressive Conservative party about “fat raises,” public sector union settlements are far behind the current rate of inflation in Ontario -- in fact, exactly half of the rate of inflation.   The Ontario Consumer Price Index ( according to Statistics Canada) increased 3.0% for the 12 month period ending July 2011.  This is down from 3.6% for the year ended June 2011.   Meanwhile public sector settlements in the first half of the year averaged only 1.5% per year according to the Ministry of Labour.   As has been the case for some time, union settlements are falling behind the rising cost of living.   Private sector union settlements have averaged 2.0% for the first half of the year. Private sector settlements were also a little higher than public sector settlements in 2010. "Fat raises"? Hmm....Mr. Hudak really did inhale.

A December 2010 Statistics Canada study on B.C.  long term care facilities confirms that not-for-profit care provides more care: Total nursing hours per resident day have increased over the past decade (1996-2006) for all facility ownership groups in British Columbia. The rate of increase in not-for-profit facilities owned by a health region was significantly greater compared with for-profit facilities. Total nursing hours per resident day were also significantly lower in for-profit facilities, compared with not-for-profit facilities. Total nursing and personal care time per day ranged from 2.13 hour per day in for-profit facilities to 3.30 hours per day in not-for-profit facilities operated by regional health authorities. American studies have found that not-for-profit ownership of nursing homes is associated with higher staffing levels, lower staff turnover, and better outcomes on a range of measures, compared with for-profit ownership. The study adds that regardless of