There was a call to action on Tuesday morning organized by the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions.
Several stretchers were set up in front of Belleville General Hospital, highlighting what they say is a need for change in how health care is delivered in the province.
The demonstrations are crossing the province during the election campaign.
Michael Hurley is the president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions of CUPE.
Audio Player“Our purpose here today is to raise the issues around the problems in the health care system and to try to get all the political parties to commit to substantial changes to improve health care for everyone.”
Hurley says they are travelling to 30 cities across Ontario during the campaign to sound the alarm about chronic issues that have lasted many years in the province.
Audio Player“Our hospitals including this one are overcrowded. Provincially we’ve got about 250,000 people waiting for surgeries because the ORs are not running 24/7. 11,000 people died on that wait list last year.”
He says that happens because there is not enough staff or beds to take patients.
Hurley says the focus is for a substantial investment in each of the next four years.
Audio Player“An additional $2 billion per year for the hospitals to clear the waiting lists and get the people off the stretchers.”
The final discussion point in our chat with Hurley was in regards to nursing agencies, which essentially are outside nurses that come to work at hospitals, but make more money that the RNs (Registered Nurses), and RPNs (Registered Practical Nurses) employed by the hospital.
Audio Player“The use of nursing agencies is a terrible problem because what it says to the nurses here is, why don’t you quit and go and work at a private nursing agency, where you can earn two or three times as much and never have to work on the weekends or the evening or night shift. What we really need is to improve salaries. What Quebec has done around the nursing agencies is ban them.”
Hurley says CUPE endorses the Ontario New Democrats in this February’s provincial election.
MEDIA RELEASE BELOW PHOTO
A small demonstration took place outside Quinte Health’s Belleville site on Tuesday (Photo: Tim Durkin/ Quinte News)
On the eve of the provincial election, a lineup of hospital stretchers outside Belleville General Hospital will symbolize the crisis in Ontario’s health care:
– 1,860 people on stretchers in hospital hallways, up from 826 in June 2018 when the premier promised to end hallway medicine.
– 2.5 million citizens without a family doctor
– Palliative homecare patients dying without painkillers and medical supplies
– 250,000 people waiting for surgeries, 11,000 of whom died on the waitlist
– Nearly 50,000 people waiting for long-term care
– Constant ER closures in small towns
“The crisis in healthcare affects almost every family,” says Michael Hurley, president of CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU-CUPE). “The entire health care sector is staggering. There is no end to the staffing shortages; ER closures, waits for surgeries or for long-term care beds or for a family doctor or for appropriate home care services. We hope to help ensure that this election focuses on solutions to this crisis.”
In the first half of 2024-25, Belleville General operated at 89% capacity, well above the 85 per cent recommended maximum bed occupancy level. According to analysis by OCHU-CUPE, Belleville must add 357 beds to achieve safe occupancy levels.
The latest data for Belleville General shows that ER patients on average wait 16 hours to be admitted, with a 67 per cent failure rate in admitting patients within the target time of eight hours.
Shortfall of $2.5 million at Quinte Health, and $800 million across Ontario.
The union is raising concerns about access to care due to growing deficits across the hospital sector.
Based on the latest data, hospitals in Ontario faced a cumulative shortfall of $800 million in the first half of 2024-25.
At Quinte Health, the shortfall was $12.5 million.
The union warns that cutbacks are already happening at numerous hospitals including Hamilton, Guelph, and Burlington, as they buckle under the weight of growing patient volumes and insufficient funding.
Pointing out that per person hospital funding in Ontario is the lowest in Canada and that we have the fewest beds and hospital staff to population, Hurley says it is not surprising to witness a record increase in hospital overcrowding
– Improve hospital capacity to match the needs of an ageing and growing population by
adding staffed hospital beds.
– Address the staffing crisis by improving compensation and working conditions, and
providing incentives such as free tuition to students in nursing and PSW programs
– End private sector delivery of acute, long-term care and community health services
– Ban agency nurses to reduce staffing costs, and invest that money in improving
compensation and working conditions for in-house workers
– Improving staffing in LTC to meet the four hours of daily care benchmark and expand
capacity to reduce waitlist
– End the contracting out of services across health care, and run LTC and home care on a
public, not-for-profit basis
– Expand the use of nurse practitioners to lead primary care clinics
