Defend Public Healthcare

Governance and Funding :  While police and fire services are usually municipal services, Emergency Medical Services (EMS) are typically controlled by provincial governments.  In Ontario, regional municipal governments have responsibility for delivering and funding EMS.  But even in Ontario the province plays a key role, strictly regulating EMS, providing funding for 50% of the approved land ambulance costs, and paying 100% of the approved costs for air ambulance, dispatch, base hospitals, First Nation EMS, and for territories without municipal government. Delivery :  Like police and fire services, EMS is predominantly a publicly provided service in Canada.   But businesses have now made some significant in-roads into EMS, primarily  Medavie,  a private corporation based in the Maritimes that describes itself as not-for-profit.  Medavie goes back over 70 years, with its roots in health insurance.  It still operates Medavie Blue Cross with 1,900 employees.  It now a

CUPE and OCHU are campaigning for a legislated minimum average of four worked hours of nursing and personal care per resident per day in long-term care (LTC) facilities. Key points:  [1] The relevant population is increasing rapidly; [2] New beds are not being created at the same pace; [3] Resident acuity and impairment are increasing; [4] Increasing acuity requires more care; [5] The province of Ontario provides less funding and less care than other provinces; [6] Expert research supports our proposal; [7] The experience of CUPE members in the homes provides some of the most compelling evidence of the need for more care.  History:  In the past, Ontario did have a standard of care, but it was taken away by the Mike Harris Progressive Conservative government.  At the time of its abolition the standard was insufficient – it was set at only 2.25 hours per resident per day.  Since that time the homes have changed dramatically: residents are much more impaired. The Ontario He

The government is coordinating cascading efforts to move patients from organizations where more care is provided to where less care is provided.   For hospitals, government funding models and directives have long focused on removing less ill patients.  In long term care homes, the government quietly raised the criteria for eligibility for the waiting list. They also stopped providing the 'case mix measure' which was the key measure of the increasing illness and acuity of long term care residents. Regardless it is now obvious acuity in the homes is rising rapidly. But these restrictions on eligibility to hospital and long term care homes have also dramatically increased demand for home care services provided by Community Care Access Centres (CCACs).  CCACs are facing both more demand and much more ill patients.  The CCACs claim  the number of their high care need patients have increased 73% between 2009/10 and 2013/14. As a percentage of total patients, high car

New data  published by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (and based on a mandatory survey undertaken by Statistics Canada) indicates that staffing at Ontario long-term care facilities (LTC) falls short of other provinces.  The Long-Term Care Facilities Survey indicates that Ontario has 0.598 health care full time equivalent staff (FTE) per LTC bed. Canada (excluding Quebec, which is not included in the survey) has 0.641 staff per bed.   In other words, Canada as a whole has 7.2% more health care staff per resident compared to Ontario. This despite the relatively low number of higher paid nursing staff in Ontario. RNs and especially RPNs are underrepresented among all health care staff in Ontario LTC facilities, with RNs comprising just 11.5% of health care FTEs and RPNs comprising just 19.3% of health care FTEs. Across Canada the corresponding figures are 13% and 25.6%. Fewer RPNs to RNs: Ontario has a relatively low number of RPNs compared to RNs in LTC faci

Four of the big Canadian banks have come out with new forecasts for the Ontario economy and they all indicate the economy is improving.   The fall in the price of oil (and, with it, the Canadian dollar) is paying off for Ontario.    All four banks predict that Ontario will have the fastest growing provincial economy in 2015.  And all implicitly suggest that the Ontario government's Fall Economic and Fiscal Review is now out of date. (See the chart  below comparing bank and government forecasts.) On average the banks predict that the economy will grow 0.3% more more quickly in 2014 than the Ontario government predicted in its Fall Economic Outlook and Fiscal Review . Nominal growth (real growth and changes in market prices due to inflation) is predicted to grow half a percent faster.  Similarly, growth is predicted to exceed the government's forecast for 2015 as well, with real growth reaching 2.7% and nominal growth reaching 4.7%.   By 2015, the new bank f