Defend Public Healthcare

The Hay Group, a global management consulting firm operating in 48 countries, has forecast a 2.7% average salary increase in Ontario for 2013, the same as for 2012. The forecast is based on a survey of public and private sector employers. Notwithstanding this, the Ontario Liberal government is proposing a wage and compensation freeze for public sector workers and also demanding other concessions from workers in bargaining. The Ontario average lags the Canada-wide forecast of 2.9% in 2013.  The Canada-wide 2013 forecast, is slightly higher than the 2012 forecast of 2.8%.  (Although the Hay Group notes that "the actual base salary changes realized in 2012 were higher than projected in almost all sectors".) The Hay group says, "More than 500 Canadian organizations provided details of their planned salary adjustments for 2013 for the Hay Group survey, which was conducted in June and July. Participants include many of Canada’s leading employers." The Hay

The Ontario Liberal government has largely  justified  its rush to prevent free collective bargaining in the education sector by claiming that without such legislation junior teachers will get their normal increment steps on the wage grid as they accrue more experience as teachers.  To wit, they argue : " Current teacher and support staff agreements expire on Aug. 31, 2012. If these are not replaced by September 1, the terms of existing contracts will automatically roll over. If this were to happen, the cost for teachers moving up the grid and for continuing the existing retirement gratuity and sick leave provisions would be $473 million." This is curious as the government actually agreed to allow the increment increases in its memorandum of understanding with the catholic teachers association - albeit on the 97th day of the school year. The trade-off loss of three days professional development pay does not occur until well into 2013 and 2014: October 11, 2013, December

The head of the Erie St. Clair Community Care Access Centre (CCAC) is seeking $4.68 million in new funding to help her agency deal with an $8 to $10 million deficit, the Sarnia Observer reports. CUPE  Local 4370 president Brian Biggers told the Observer that worker hours have been reduced. " It's having a sort of revolving door effect on staff, " he said. " Because staff have to move on to other things. They have to survive. " The CCAC has asked the Chatham Kent hospit al to limit its referrals to the CCAC because of the CCAC's budget deficit. The Ministry of Health and LTC claims that improvements in home care will offset the budget squeeze on hospital services. However, the Observer reports a doubling of in-patients at the local Sarnia hospital waiting for less intensive forms of  health care. Meanwhile the Chatham-Kent hospital is planning to cut over 20 beds. The government agency responsible for funding the CCAC was unavailable for comme

A new report indicates that C. difficile is linked in hospital records to more than 30,000 deaths a year in the United States. That's about twice as many as federal US estimates and rivals the 32,000 killed in traffic accidents in the US. USA Today reports that in March, the Centre for Disease Control indicated that the infection kills 14,000 people a year. "But that estimate is based on death certificates, which often don't list the infection when patients die from complications, such as kidney failure. Hospital billing data collected by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality shows that more than 9% of C. diff-related hospitalizations end in death — nearly five times the rate for other hospital stays. That adds up to more than 30,000 fatalities among the 347,000 C. diff hospitalizations in 2010." OCHU successfully campaigned for public reporting of hospital acquired infections like C. difficile, but the Ontario government has simply re

It is, perhaps, amusing to see the various top public sector bosses and  mucky-mucks caught with their hands in the cookie jar: the $81,250 bonus for the e-Health boss approved by the eHealth board (and then turned down when the public looked like it might be ready for a lynching), the new $428,000 annual contract for the Deputy Minister of Health and LTC, the $1.4 million salary for the former boss of ORNGE air ambulance, the revelation yesterday that 98% of Ontario Public Services managers are also getting a bonus, with the average bonus equal to $4,091.95, or 3.6% of salary.  (And one does wonder about boss bonuses in the hospital sector too...) It's less amusing when you recall that these same people are ramming contract concessions and compensation freezes down the throats of their subordinates. Despite the protestations otherwise, many top public sector bosses have managed to wheedle  themselves an awful lot more gold in the last decade or two -- just as the captains o

Four months into the fiscal year, and we now know that long term care funding per bed is going up 1.47% in Ontario. The LTC funding envelope that will get the biggest increase will be "Raw Food", which will see a 3% increase effective July 1. (The 3% is not counting a commitment by the government to continue extra raw food funding of 1.8% that was supposed to expire June 30). Other funding envelopes that are connected to wages for long term care workers (raw food is not connected) will see a much more modest increase effective April 1: just slightly less than 1% for the "Nursing and Personal Care" and "Program and Support Services" envelops. While raw food costs are not affected by LTC wages, these two areas most definitely are.  In other words, long term care workers are being asked to bear the main role in containing costs. Accommodation funding (the one envelope where owners can rake off a profit) will get a 2.1% increase effective July 1 (agai

The Chatham-Kent Health Alliance is planning to cut 22 hospital beds to deal with the government's funding squeeze. The cuts include seven medical beds, two surgical beds, and three pediatric beds in Chatham, as well as 10 complex continuing care beds at the Sydenham campus in Wallaceburg. The bed cuts are supposed to reduce the hospital's deficit. The Ontario government has endlessly claimed that improved home care services will offset hospital cuts. " Rebalance " is the Health Minister's word of choice. Despite this claim,  the organization overseeing home care in the Chatham area (the Erie-St. Clair Community Care Access Centre or "CCAC") is projecting a deficit of $8 to $10 million. The CCAC plans "aggressive and deliberate" actions to live within the budget provided by the government.  The CCAC boss, Betty Kuchta says this " is likely going to mean service adjustments."  Kuchta told the Windsor Star that they will s