Category Archives: Health System

New Video: Faces of Support – Making Ontario’s Hospitals run effectively

Posted on February 2, 2012 | Leave a comment

This new video looks behind the scenes at the contributions highly skilled support staff make to the daily running of a hospital. It is a big mistake to assume these individuals are expendable during times of austerity — experience tells us these workers are key to making hospitals both safe and efficient. Clearly from the stories they tell, what patients also value is a smile and someone who treats them with dignity. This video was shot last year at York Central Hospital in Richmond Hill and at the Kingston Hotel Dieu Hospital as a project of OPSEU’s Hospital Support Division.

Faces of Support (2012) 14 minutes – Featuring Jill McIlwraith (Chair, OPSEU Hospital Support Division), Warren “Smokey” Thomas (President, OPSEU).

Click here to watch the movie:

 

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McGuinty holds course on health care – LHINs to get more funding power

Posted on January 31, 2012 | Leave a comment

The new health care plan appears to be the old health care plan after all.

Yesterday the Minister of Health released Ontario’s Action Plan for Health Care, a 14-page outline of the McGuinty government’s plan for its largest social program.

The media have focused on primary care being brought under the jurisdiction of the Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs), although it is not clear whether that is just the Family Health Teams (FHTs) or whether it applies to all primary care doctors.

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Matthews’ speeches in short supply

Posted on January 30, 2012 | 1 comment

Today’s speech by the Minister of Health and Long Term Care before the Toronto Board of Trade is sold out.

There has been much focus on it despite suggestions by Toronto Star columnist Martin Regg Cohn that the speech will signal a new direction in health care that just happens to be the same old direction in health care.

Shortly we will know for sure.

There used to be a time when Ontario health ministers were more forthcoming with speeches about their plans.

During George Smitherman’s first full year as Minister of Health and Long Term Care (2004) he posted 14 policy speeches on-line. The following year there were nine more, seven in 2006 and another early in 2005 before Smitherman was replaced by David Caplan, who posted two speeches during his very short stay on the 10th floor of the Hepburn Block.

Since Deb Matthews was appointed in 2009, only her annual speech to the Ontario Hospital Association has been posted. That’s one per year.

Is that really the sum total of her speeches, or is that all that the Ministry feels worthwhile to post?

No wonder such anticipation meets today’s speech. Like the Hollywood film “The Artist,” we all wait for the moment to hear her speak.

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Sticky Notes: Nordal gets $1.17 million bonus, more ORNGE woes

Posted on January 28, 2012 | Leave a comment

Things got a bit sticky for Health Minister Deb Matthews on two fronts this week. Her reaction? “I’m outraged,” she said.

The first was the news that former London hospital CEO Cliff Nordal received a $1.17 million bonus on top of his salary for remaining at his post for four years overseeing both St. Joseph’s Health Care and London Health Sciences. Nordal has since retired and the two hospitals are now run separately.

Nordal was not the only one to receive a large eyebrow raising cheque. Over the past five years, according to the QMI agency, the two hospitals handed out $2.9 million in severance packages to another 11 executives.

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Public left out of major policy decisions: business elite backdrop for announcements

Posted on January 27, 2012 | Leave a comment

When was the last time a major policy announcement was made by government in front of an audience of union members?

On Monday Health Minister Deb Matthews is expected to make a major announcement on health restructuring before the Toronto Board of Trade. Earlier this week Premier Dalton McGuinty made a similar speech before the Canadian Club of Toronto.

With no legislative committees operating at Queen’s Park due a disagreement among the parties as to their composition, Ontario is about to undergo a major restructuring of public services with little to no public input.

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McGuinty says wait times could lengthen

Posted on January 26, 2012 | Leave a comment

The government has repeatedly responded to criticisms about health care by trotting out statistics describing how much wait times have been reduced since 2004.

On Monday Premier Dalton McGuinty suggested to reporters that wait times could increase once cost-cutting “reforms” are introduced in the March budget.

Is McGuinty confusing cuts with reforms? What kind of “reform” would citizens buy into that actually lengthened wait times? This makes no sense.

The suggestion may also rock public opinion. Ontarians have been sold on the idea that their biggest health care concern is wait times. 82 per cent told the Vector Poll in December that government’s top priority should be to reduce ER wait times.

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Algoma residents asked to drive 85 kilometres or more for a blood test

Posted on January 24, 2012 | 3 comments

Not everyone may be aware of Thessalon.

The small retirement community is on the north shore of Lake Huron and bills itself as the “gem of Algoma.”

Last October the hospital closed the doors of its medical laboratory to outpatients. This affects a region of about 9,000 people who live to the east of Sault Ste. Marie.

This is not unusual. Thessalon was already an outlier given most hospitals have already closed their doors to outpatient medical laboratory testing. Nobody will say it’s a policy. It just… happened.

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How does Drummond decide which C-Sections are unnecessary?

Posted on January 23, 2012 | 10 comments

According to the Toronto Star, the Drummond Commission will recommend a major overhaul of our health care system, including delisting of certain procedures from OHIP coverage while reducing the incidence of others.

This is a turnaround from Drummond’s earlier insistence that he wasn’t for U.S.-style privatization. If a service is delisted from OHIP, it becomes totally privatized.

There will likely be considerable debate over these procedures, given it is economist Don Drummond, and not the Ontario Medical Association, that is deciding which have value, and which don’t. And just because it is not covered, that doesn’t mean a procedure won’t be performed if someone has sufficient cash to make it happen.

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Canada loses 2.9 per cent of health and social service workforce in 2011

Posted on January 21, 2012 | Leave a comment

Feeling a little more stressed at work this year?

It may be because there are fewer health care workers and more patients coming through the door.

Canada shed more than 9,000 jobs in health care and social assistance between November and December of 2011 according to Statistics Canada.

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A light bulb turns on – Goar conflicted over evidence on health care spending

Posted on January 20, 2012 | 1 comment

When Jim Flaherty was Ontario finance minister, he predicted in 2001 that health care spending would increase to 60 cents on every dollar spent by the Ontario government within five years.

The Tories were then spending 46 cents.

Five years later it was a different government in power at Queen’s Park and Greg Sorbara was Ontario finance minister. Sorbara complained that 45 cents of every dollar was going to health care. He said the government had to get health spending under control.

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