Category Archives: Uncategorized

Is Canadian Blood Services rolling the dice on the future security of needed plasma products?

Posted on May 15, 2012 | 4 comments

Their employer fled town, but the workers are still there.

Canadian Blood Services wasted no time in vacating the premises formerly occupied by the Thunder Bay Plasma Donor Clinic up until April 12.

While CBS maintains closure of the clinic was in the works for some time, they had to break their lease and other contracts to make their quick getaway out-of-town. We have no idea what that cost, but along with the layoff of 28 managers and staff, I’m sure they regard it as “just business.”

Initially selling the public on the idea that they had too much plasma — this in a country that has never been self-sufficient in plasma – it has become clear that the real reason behind the closure is financial.

Put simply, it’s cheaper to buy products with source plasma collected from other countries than it is to collect it here and have it fractionated abroad.

Continue reading →

4 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Bluster turns to action as Ontario rolls back doctor’s fees

Posted on May 7, 2012 | 1 comment

Well that didn’t take long.

After a few weeks of bluster, the Ontario government has walked away from bargaining with the province’s doctors and imposed a retroactive fee schedule that rolls back fees affecting 4,500 different OHIP services.

That includes a four-year 11 per cent rollback on fees paid for 250 diagnostic radiology tests that the government claims are justified by improved technological efficiency.

Fees paid for cataracts are being similarly rolled back from $441 to $397.75.

Fees paid for eye injections for retinal disease will be more than halved over four years, from $189 to $90.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , ,

Staff turnover rates costly to hospitals – will we see them escalate further?

Posted on May 7, 2012 | Leave a comment

How organizations determine the cost of employee turnover can vary. Some look at only the recruitment costs. For example, in 2008 HealthForce Ontario estimated it costs $25,000 to recruit a nurse. Others look at broader impacts, including the cost of severance, recruitment, training, overtime and lost productivity. London Health Sciences Centre, for example, estimates the real cost of employee turnover can be as much as 1.5 times the position’s annual compensation.

At the Niagara Health System Kevin Smith, the government appointed supervisor, noted in his interim report the difficulty the regional hospital system faces in recruitment and retention, estimating a 5.7 per cent annual rate of turnover to 2019. That turnover is about equally divided between retirees and those who simply decide to resign and seek work elsewhere. That means about 1,750 staff will need to be replaced between 2013-2019. Seventy physicians will also need to be replaced over that period.

“There is intense pressure and frankly competition to attract the best and the brightest to any organization and the NHS is currently at a disadvantage,” Smith notes.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , ,

McGuinty says he needs majority to take hard line against labour

Posted on May 3, 2012 | Leave a comment

Dalton McGuinty may have handed health care professionals and other public sector workers a reason to vote against the Liberals in upcoming Kitchener-Waterloo byelection.

The seat was recently vacated by Tory health critic Elizabeth Witmer after she accepted an appointment as Chair of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB). This despite past conflicts between Witmer and the Liberals over the WSIB.

Should the byelection be won by the Liberals, it would propel the McGuinty government into a defacto majority, the speaker allowed to break tie votes in provincial parliament.

Given the “elegant” compromise with the NDP over the budget, why would McGuinty suddenly need a majority so badly that he would be willing to appoint a long-time opponent to such a sensitive position at WSIB?

According to the Toronto Star’s Martin Regg Cohn, McGuinty says he needs the majority “because tough times require a hard line against labour.”

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , ,

Matthews comments considered “condescending” in Sudbury

Posted on May 3, 2012 | Leave a comment

Sudbury residents may be a little mystified by Health Minister Deb Matthews recent comments on their emergency room problem.

Health Sciences North recently closed 30 transitional beds in March. These beds were occupied by individuals described as alternate level of care (ALC) – patients who have completed their acute care treatment, but are not well enough to go home.

Now the hospital has among the highest waits in the province for access to its ER.

According to the Sudbury Star, a 17-hour wait in February expanded to a 19.7 hour wait in March. The hospital is fingering the rising number of ALC patients as the culprit.

Some would look at this and see some dots connecting.

Remarkably, in an interview with the Sudbury Star, Matthews said “I’ve been enormously impressed with the way the community has come together to find solutions.”

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Education and experience account for higher paid public sector jobs

Posted on April 27, 2012 | Leave a comment

The Fraser Institute and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business having been ratcheting up the war on public sector workers, portraying hospital workers, teachers and other public sector workers as fat cats who are overpaid compared to their private sector counterparts.

Of course, you won’t find anyone in the public sector who earns the kinds of salaries bank executives have been piling up, most major Canadian bank CEOs skyward of $10 million per year.

Free to be as political as they like (no attacks from the Harper government on the Fraser Institute’s charitable status), they use their media-supported bully pulpit to regularly demonize the public sector.

Now a new report from the Centre for Spatial Economics (C4SE) calls into question the assumptions in these attacks.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , ,

CMA responds to Citizen two-tier health care story

Posted on April 26, 2012 | Leave a comment

Further to our recent story about Bruyere Continuing Care CEO Michel Bilodeau’s public musings about introducing two-tier private insurance in Canada, Canadian Medical Association President Dr. John Haggie has written to the Ottawa Citizen regarding the suggestion that this was something the CMA  endorsed.

Haggie writes:

“The CMA’s position is that core services such as hospital and medical services should be publicly funded. Only when access to timely care cannot be provided in the publicly funded system should Canadians be able to use private health insurance to reimburse the cost of care obtained in the private sector.”

Haggie goes on to state that Canadian physicians agree with Canadians who want a strong, publicly funded system. Patients must have access based on need, not ability to pay, he states.

The Canadian Medical Association is the professional organization representing 74,000 doctors across Canada.

If you liked this story, pass it on! Click the share button below, post it on your Facebook site, or retweet it to your followers.

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , ,

Federal petition re imports of U.S. plasma

Posted on April 23, 2012 | 1 comment

Thousands have already signed our provincial petition asking Health Minister Deb Matthews to use the province’s role as a major funder of Canadian Blood Services to pursue more domestic content in plasma products used by Ontario hospitals.

The petition was circulated after it was learned CBS was closing its Thunder Bay plasma donor clinic at the same time it was increasing “surplus” plasma imports from the United States.

A second petition has now been drafted which asks the Federal government to intervene as regulator of the blood system.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , ,

Duncan calls for new $1.8 billion Windsor hospital after cancelling hospital projects in other communities

Posted on April 23, 2012 | 4 comments

While cancelling the new $136.8 million West Lincoln Memorial Hospital in Grimsby, along with cuts to five other hospital projects across the province, Finance Minister Dwight Duncan announced a task force to look at building a new $1.5 billion regional hospital in his Windsor constituency.

The new super hospital would replace both Windsor Regional Hospital and Windsor Hotel Dieu. This is even though both hospitals have undergone recent additions, including a $91.6 million mental health facility at WRH and an $80 million cardiac care expansion at Hotel Dieu. Last year the government also approved a $60 million expansion of WRH’s ER and laboratory facilities – a project that wasn’t shelved as part of the McGuinty austerity budget.

Despite more than $230 million in new builds at the two hospitals – almost twice what it would cost to rebuild West Lincoln, Duncan estimates the Windsor hospitals will require another $1.8 billion in new capital projects to keep the two hospitals operating.

David Musyj, CEO of Windsor Regional, says both the buildings and the site are physically inadequate for what’s needed in the near future.

Continue reading →

4 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

You Don’t Know Don Quiz!

Posted on April 20, 2012 | Leave a comment

How much do you know about banker Don Drummond’s 105 recommendations for Ontario’s health system? Last fall Drummond was engaged by the province to come up with a roadmap for reform of the public sector.

Attending this year’s OPSEU Convention (April 19-21), Becky Thomson scored 7 out of 7 on our quiz and won a $100 gift certificate courtesy OPSEU’s Health Care Divisional Council. Incidentally, $100 is 1/15th of what Drummond got paid per day to work on his report.

Test your knowledge — answers follow the “continue reading” link.

1. In between emergency calls, Don Drummond would like ambulance paramedics to…
a. Conduct home care visits
b. Change the oil and filter on their ambulance
c. Practice using Milton Bradley’s “Operation”

2. Don Drummond doesn’t believe in freezing wages, however he proposes to…
a. Give health care employers no money for wage increases
b. Move hospitals to Indiana unless health care workers agree to cut their wages in half
c. Literally hand out workers’ wages encased in a block of ice

3. Don Drummond refers to a TD Economics report that predicts health care will take up 80 per cent of Ontario’s program spending by 2030. Who wrote that TD Economics Report?
a. Nostradamus
b. The same folks who wrecked the economy in 2008
c. Don Drummond

4. Don Drummond says he wants to resist the natural temptation to…
a. Do the right thing
b. Build many more long-term care homes despite an aging population and long waits for beds
c. Scratch somewhere impolite

5. Don Drummond wants to spend more on..
a. Mental health, home care and public health
b. Pizza for the post-Commission wrap party
c. Another Commission

6. Don Drummond wants to spend less on
a. Hospitals and doctors
b. Beano anti-gas tablets
c. You

7. The Drummond Report is…
a. A warmed over version of the existing McGuinty health plan
b. A roadmap to further private delivery of public health care
c. Uncosted and impractical
d. All of the Above

Answers

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , ,