Defend Public Healthcare

The Financial Accountability Office has released the Ford PC government's funding plans for the various health care sub-sectors .   The news is not good.   The funding plans for 2022/3 in several key line items are down compared to actual funding in 2021/2 :  Funding plans for long-term care services are down $26 million – or down 0.4% compared to last year's actual funding.  Overall funding to the Ministry of Long-Term Care (LTC service funding plus LTC Capital and Development funding) is down $315 million, with the LTC Capital line item down a full $376 million. The LTC Development line item was also completely unspent over the last five quarters. These are mysterious changes when there is a 38,000 person LTC wait list, a desperate shortage of LTC facilities that meet modern design standards, new legislation that forces hospital patients to move into LTC facilities they did not choose, and frequent claims by the government that it is quickly building new, high quality LTC fa

The Ford government re-released its spring Budget this week with a new first quarter fiscal and economic update  providing a little bit more information -- albeit from a government with a track record for wildly inaccurate Budget plans.    The increases in spending announced (e.g. for people with disabilities on a fixed income) are so insignificant in the scheme of things that they can be handled within government contingencies.  Overall program spending is still exactly as planned in April.  Total spending , which also includes the debt expense, is up a modest $105 million due to higher interest rates. As a result, the total spending plan is up by five one hundreths of one percent (0.05%).  They are not even writing down their $1 billion reserve by a few kopeks.  With increased revenues, the deficit is planned to be $1.1 billion lower and the debt to GDP ratio is also planned to be a full percent lower.  Keeping with the new health minister's (preposterous) claim that there is n

Contrary to popular perception, there are more assaults  in hospitals than in any other industry. Long-term care facilities are also major sites for assaults.  Health care as a whole has  by far  the most assaults that result in lost time injuries – far, far more than any other sector.  Assaults in hospitals and LTC are overwhelmingly on women, and they are increasing over time.   Health care support jobs have seen almost half of all the assaults on health care staff.   Health care support jobs are now the occupation with the most assaults resulting in lost time injuries - - far more than police and firefighters combined. Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) data  on approved lost time claims for violent assaults shows that hospital employees have more approved lost time injury claims for assaults than any other industry.  With 2,459 over 2011-2019 that is 10% of the total lost time injuries for assaults and 44% more than the next highest industry group.  As many hospitals a

The massive cut in the number of hospital beds in Ontario in the 1990s is, by now, well known. Community and labour movement campaigns over the last fifteen years stopped the decline in the  number of beds, but the push for cuts is relentless.  Hospital beds per capita have continued to decline right up until the most recent data reported. Moreover, Ontario remains a low capacity outlier -- with far fewer beds per capita than other provinces.   This chart excludes Neonatal ICU beds and bassinets.  CIHI does not report data, in this case, for Quebec. This Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) chart (above) shows a 6.9% decline in hospital beds per capita from 2009/10 to 2018/19 .   Ontario had fewer beds than any other province reported per capita.  The next lowest (Alberta) had 12.2% more beds in 2018-19 . There was even a decline in the absolute number of Ontario ICU, Obstetric, Pediatric, and Complex Continuing Care ("LTC") beds, with the latter category seeing

Job vacancies across the Ontario economy have sky-rocketed over the last two years, with a ten percent increase in 2020 and a 66% increase in 2021.  Compounded that represents an 82% increase in two years.  Correspondingly, the average offered hourly wage for all occupations went up 4.6% in Ontario (to $23.70) from the end of 2019 to the end of 2021.  The increase in job vacancies is particularly marked in health care industries. In hospitals, there has been a continuous increase in the number of job vacancies and in the job vacancy rate since 2015, with a sharp spike in the last two years. Job vacancies went from 3,635 at the end of 2015 to 8,855 at the end of 2019 (just before COVID), and then onto 16,685 by the end of 2021.  That is a 359% increase since the end of 2015 and a 88% increase since the end of 2019. The hospital job vacancy rate has increased from 1.6% at the end of 2015 to 6.3% at the end of 2021. In nursing and residential care facilities the pattern has been broadly

The long term fiscal and economic outlook released this week by Ontario's Financial Accountability Office (FAO) shows that big increases in health care spending are required in the years ahead.   The FAO forecasts that provincial government spending on health care will increase from an average of 6.4% of gross domestic product (GDP) to 7.6% for years 2024 through 2031. It will then go to 8.3% in the 2030s and 9.1% in the 2040s. An increase from 6.4% of GDP to 9.1% is a big increase in health care's share of economic activity.   A key factor driving this is an aging population.  Older people need more health care. For the current decade (2020-30), the FAO forecasts provincial health care spending increases at 5% per year:   A key take away from this is that the health care workforce will need to expand.  The staff shortages that currently bedevil health care are going to get worse if there is not a concerted effort to recruit and retain health care staff by making health care a

Lost time injury (LTI) claims for workers compensation by health care support workers have shot up in the last few years, even before COVID-19.     For many years, claims were in the 2,500 range, before starting an upward track in 2014, rising to 4,271 in 2019, just before COVID-19 hit.  That is about a 60% increase.   Other major occupations in health care saw the number of claims remain basically flat between 2002 and 2019 (with things changing in 2020, as we shall see).    By 2019, health care support workers had the second most workplace lost time injury claims of any occupation reported by the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) - only motor vehicle and transit drivers had more, with 4,901 in 2019. In 2002, health care support workers had only the eighth highest number of LTI claims. So things have changed. The increase in injury claims among health care support workers is more remarkable as WSIB has been on a tear to reduce lost time injury benefit claims – with total