Letter: How to dismantle a hospital
To The Editor:
Dalton McGuinty is smiling. His plan to savage hospitals, and move health services from hospitals into the community, and into the arms of private companies, is coming true.
All over Ontario, hospitals are working to eliminate their budget deficits; hospital employees are being told to do more with less. They are told they are responsible for mistakes and errors, not their managers, who decide staffing levels. Patients are being discharged from hospital and sent home, based on financial statistics, and not recovery levels. Cleaning staff is being told their workload is increasing and their help is being “downsized”. Hospital services and beds are being cut,
Services are being de-listed from OHIP, causing more out of pocket expenses for patients. The provincial government encourages privatization of health services. Some services are now described as robbing the coffers of money intended for other programs.
Premier McGuinty has been at this for some time now. He has been successful in making the public believe that health care is too expensive, and Ontario continues to overspend. That is a lie. Ontario spends less tax dollars on health care than most other provinces. Health spending has been shrinking for several years due to McGuinty’s cuts.
The CEO of the CKHA announced lay-offs and service cuts yesterday. Now we are left with a situation where the long ER wait times in Chatham Kent will get longer, because of bed reductions. In Chatham, Medicine and Surgery and Paediatric beds have been cut. Surgeries will be reduced. Point of Care devices, more technically complicated than the usual glucometers and other hand held devices that most ER’s use, will be replacing qualified laboratory technologists in the Wallaceburg ER. 10 Complex Continuing Care beds are to be eliminated in Wallaceburg. More cuts are being considered.
Reduced numbers of active beds mean longer ER wait times and longer wait times for hospital admission, and more patient transfers to other facilities.
Increased workload will result as ER nurses try to provide care for ER patients, draw blood samples and perform blood tests.
It is obvious that patients in Complex Continuing Care beds or in Alternate Level of Care beds are more costly to hospitals; they are the frail and elderly, who now depend on others for help in their daily living. These patients are residents of Ontario; they have not given up their rights to proper health care and dignity in life, yet they represent bad business. The CEO of CKHA states that the CKHA can no longer afford to be in the Chronic Care business. It is now official: health care has little to do with patients’ welfare and is run like a business!
There is a long waiting list for nursing home beds, and an even longer wait for homecare services. Where does Dalton McGuinty expect these patients to go? Perhaps to private, for-profit long term care homes, with decreased regulations about quality and quantity of care?
What would any good businessman do? He would listen to business trends (the provincial government’s plans), he would downsize services that are deemed to be inefficient
(In-hospital lab services), download work onto other workers, despite their already heavy workload (point of care devices in ER), and declare that the care of elderly and frail patients is no longer a priority, but is an expense that cannot be tolerated.
This businessman would also look to hire full time case cost analyzers and a new manager for the Sydenham Complex Continuing care unit, despite this unit being downsized. In the near future I can imagine he will make comments regarding the Wallaceburg ER staff not being able to handle the workload, and perhaps the ER should be downsized to an Urgent Care Centre or he may suggest closing the ER at night.
This last week, the ER staff, at both campuses, was instructed that they could no longer offer hot food to ER patients who will not be admitted. What a cost saving! And it only comes at the expense of compassion. A seriously ill patient at the Chatham ER had to wait approximately 15 hours for a bed upstairs, finally being admitted at midnight. That’s the cost of doing business.
All Ontario hospitals will have to develop new Mission and Vision statements, leaving out any reference to quality care. The public should decide! What about: “We’re open for business, sort of”…. or Administration is Us” or…. “Quality care? What quality care”
Call your CKHA tri-board members. Call your MPP’s. Call the papers. Call the Premier. Call the Health Minister. Call the Tax collectors. You are citizens, voters and taxpayers.
Act now. Or we will have a completely new health care system: one that has nothing to do with the Canada Health Act, which guarantees equitable access to health care for all.
Shirley Roebuck, Chair, Chatham Kent Health Coalition.
A Sitting Duck
July 30, 2012 at 5:12 pm
Well said. Well said.
larry
July 30, 2012 at 6:55 pm
i think it’s about time to put health care back were it should be on top of the list because are country was the best for health care until Harper started screwing with it, because if you want good health now a days you have to a new country and why because of are dam government like to keep all there dam money for them self and care less about the people who vote them in because they can pay health care and screw the rest of use in there books
Carrie Hoogsteen
July 31, 2012 at 9:36 am
I just hope Joe public realizes the reason behind the long ER w
ait times and doesn’t take their frustration out on the ER staff. They try their best to keep the patients moving thru the department but with all these cuts it is going to become more difficult to do this.
Coper
July 31, 2012 at 3:39 pm
You know folks this is very short sighted. For one the deficit has excelerated as the tax base has almost disappeared. To be frank we should have been paying copays along time ago to support the local hosiptals. OHIP has become a welfare company with only deficits and no real source of income. Except for the public coffers. Support co pays and private insurance instead of the OHIP white elephant health care.
Mary Jane Miller
July 31, 2012 at 5:15 pm
Dalton McGuinty has never faced the long wait in an ER with a sick child for 6 to 7 hour wait, if he had there would be no long waits. He needs to listen to the puplic we are the one who pay his wages and that huge pension he will get. We need to go to our MPP’s and start demanding that something changes or maybe its time for an election.
Ex-Liberal
July 31, 2012 at 5:35 pm
I have to agree with Coper. This is the problem with socialized health care. It’s great that we don’t have to worry about going broke because we need health care. BUT… this is the ‘flip side’ of it… Dr shortages, sub standard care, long waits, lack of facilities and so on…
This is why the ‘right’ in the USA are putting up such a stink over ‘Obama care’. They can see these consequences coming for them as well… and they will come. Currently, if you want to receive the absolute best health care… you go to the USA. And it’s only because they have avoided socializing their health care system. And now, thanks to Obama, that’s coming to an end.
We need to allow private health care insurance providers access to Canada to lessen the burden on the ‘socialized’ care.
Travis Hooper
July 31, 2012 at 6:26 pm
Well said Shirley! Having sat with you on the SOS committee, you have always had the best motivation for saving our hospital, and that has been the staff, services and well being of our community! IF only the hospital administration and government would follow suit!
Millions of dollars will be spent on job greenation paid by our Governments and yet millions of dollars have been wasted in our Health Care system on making administration easier and services harder to come by, time and time again! Our governments at all levels are out of control and need to stop the waste! Or we will be free to the highest bidder soon enough!
Jeff Wesley
July 31, 2012 at 8:24 pm
Shirley’s passion for health care and concern for others always shines through. The problem with health care funding is that it is not spent in the right places (too much on administration)and too much of it is wasted(eHealth, ORNGE).
1)Before the CKHA starts cutting front line health care I want to see that every possible dollar is cut from non health care expenses first.
2) Anne Stewart has requested financial records for SDH and she is being stopped in her efforts to get them – what Anne wants to see (as we all do) is whether SDH has taken more than it’s fair share of cuts over the years (I think I know the answer but want the proof)and if so it is time for others to take their share.
Jeff.
Health Centres
July 31, 2012 at 10:32 pm
Where does the money come from these Health Centres?
Michael Cowtan
August 1, 2012 at 12:16 pm
For Copper and Ex-Liberal
http://ayoungmomsmusings.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/how-i-lost-my-fear-of-universal-health.html
I don’t want what she left behind:
“I never went to the Dr growing up, we didn’t have health insurance”
“When I mentioned to Canadians that I had been in a car accident as a teen and hadn’t gone into the hospital, they were shocked! Here, you always went to the hospital, just in case. And the back pain I had endured ever since would have been investigated and cared for with whatever X-rays”
“The only people guaranteed immediate and full service in the USA, were those with the best (and most expensive) health coverage or wads of cash they could blow”
Michael Cowtan
August 1, 2012 at 1:15 pm
3,790 Americans received more than $1.4 million worth of free health care in Canada in 2011.
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Bogus%2Brefugees%2Bhealth%2Bcare%2BKenney/7022303/story.html#ixzz22Iexnfns
Ex-Liberal
August 1, 2012 at 2:16 pm
If our health care system is so great Michael, then what is all the whining about?
Doctors and nurses are expensive…. they don’t work for free. Hospitals and health centres are expensive. Medical equipment is expensive. Etc, etc, etc…
Whether you want to admit it or not, the fact is, our system sucks. And we need to change it. And the bottom line is, it’s about MONEY.
Raising health taxes on corporate Canada will backfire(is backfiring in Ontario) because that hurts the economy(raises unemployment) and puts more strain on the system.
Any industry the gov tries to run ends up ‘top heavy’, wasteful and disfunctional. Privatization removes the waste and makes industry efficient. History proves this…. like it or not.