Category Archives: Uncategorized

Video of Monday’s rally to save health care services at the Northumberland Hills Hospital in Cobourg.

Doctors who trade music on file sharing programs might also unknowingly be swapping their patient records according to a study by researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario. The study says software installed on home computers can make health and financial documents vulnerable to fraud or theft. … Hospital cuts and the e-Health scandal have been the focus of debate in the upcoming Ottawa West-Nepean byelection. PC leader Tim Hudak held a press conference calling this “a time of crisis in Ottawa’s health care system,” suggesting the McGuinty government should recover millions paid in untendered contracts and redirect it to cash-strapped Ottawa hospitals, according to the Ottawa Citizen. Liberal candidate Bob Chiarelli fired back that Hudak had helped wield the knife that cut health services in the region during the Harris government. “As a leading member of the common sense revolution, he fired nurses, he closed the Grace hospital, he closed the Riverdale and he tried to close the Montfort,” Chiarelli told the newspaper. … On Tuesday a Coroner’s Inquest was called into the death of 18-year-old Reilly Anzovino who was killed in a Niagara-area automobile accident December 27^th. Various groups, including the Ontario Federation of Labour, had been calling for the inquest following the closure of the Fort Erie and Port Colborne Hospital emergency rooms. … Don’t miss a single posting on Diablogue – sign up at right for updates whenver a new post goes up!

The Canadian Physiotherapy Association is drawing attention to the profession through its first public advertising campaign in 90 years.  The campaign will including television commercials airing during CTV’s Olympic coverage, a public web site, and print ads in the run up to National Physiotherapy month in May.

“Necessary physiotherapy services should be accessible to all Canadians without delay,” says Alice Aiken, PhD, PT, and President of the Canadian Physiotherapy Association. “Canadians are able to decide for themselves that they want to see a physiotherapist and they should be able to access physiotherapy, free of unwarranted legislative, bureaucratic, or economic constraints. Facilitating timely, direct access to a local physiotherapist is the most important goal of the CPA’s national advertising campaign”, adds Dr. Aiken, “because when patients see a physiotherapist without delay, they get better faster and can return to work sooner.”

The companion web site for the campaign can be found at

www.physiotherapy.ca

PARRY SOUND – Facing a four-year wage freeze, Parry Sound Victorian Order of Nurses (VON) home care personal support workers have drawn a line in the sand when it comes to rollbacks of their paid travel time.

About 40 members of OPSEU’s Local 320 are counting down to a strike date of March 5 after the VON refused to back down on a plan to claw back pay for travel time.

The workers were divested from the Parry Sound hospital in 2008 with a promise to maintain their wages and benefits. Their last contract expired almost two years ago – March 31, 2008.

Having bid too low to take the personal support contract, the VON now plans on pushing wages and conditions lower in order to compete when the contract next goes to bid.

“The government maintains the myth that competitive bidding is based on quality, not on the drive to the bottom, as critics claim,” says Warren (Smokey) Thomas, President of the 130,000-member Ontario Public Service Employees Union. “Every time we get into bargaining, its quite clear agencies believe money is the determining factor in who gets these contracts.”

OPSEU maintains the race to the bottom has already created huge shortages of skilled staff in home care.

Under the proposed terms of the rollback, personal support workers could be travelling up to 40 km per day to see their clients without compensation.

The two sides next meet with a mediator on February 25 to try and resolve the impasse.

The Parry Sound workers provide basic supports to allow frail individuals to stay in their homes, such as bathing and dressing.

Ontario has confirmed Raymond Hession as the new Chair of eHealth Ontario’s board of directors for a three-year term. The appointment, made by Order-In-Council, took effect February 1, 2010.

Ray Hession of Ottawa is the immediate past chair of the Board of Governors of The Ottawa Hospital. He is currently chair of the Minister’s Advisory Committee on Service Canada, chair of the Cooperative Housing Agency of Canada. Previously, Mr. Hession had been employed in various positions including: deputy minister in the federal government; President & CEO of PAXPORT Inc., an airport development company; President and CEO of Kinburn Technologies Ltd., an information technology holding company; Industry Manager, Government, Education and Medical, IBM Canada Ltd.; Director, Ottawa Health Research Institute; Director, University of Ottawa Heart Institute; chair of the Rehabilitation Center of Ottawa; and, trustee of the Royal Ottawa Health Care Group.

More than 25,000 health care providers in Saskatchewan saw talks collapse last week between them and the government and the Saskatchewan Association of Health Organizations (SAHO). The province and SAHO presented a “take it or leave it offer,” cancelled bargaining dates and then contacted the media.

The employers’ final offer increases the wage offer by 0.1 per cent (to 9.5 per cent over four years) and contains many concessions.

The 25,000 health care providers in the province have been without new collective agreements for almost two years. They include special care aides, licensed practical nurses, food services workers, laundry, housekeeping and activity personnel, maintenance, administrative, clerical, emergency medical personnel, therapeutic and diagnostic technologists, and recreational workers.

See: http://www.publicvalues.ca/ViewArticle.cfm?Ref=00573

Under pressure in a downtown Toronto by-election, Dalton McGuinty has given the first indication of hospital funding for 2010/11.  Hospital funding has been a key issue in the riding vacated by former health minister George Smitherman.  “I can say one thing with absolute certainty,” Premier Dalton McGuinty told the media Wednesday, “there will be more money for hospitals this year, but it won’t grow at the same rate it has in recent years.”McGuinty said he has to take the economy into account.

Tom Closson, president of the Ontario Hospital Association, said “even at two per cent funding, hospitals would have to fine one per cent operational efficiency, plus they’d have to address the deficits that they already have.”

Pressure has been mounting since 18-year-old Reilly Anzovino died December 27 just as an ambulance carrying her arrived at the Welland hospital. The emergency room at Fort Erie, five kilometers closer, had been closed last year as part of the controversial Niagara Health System restructuring plan. Her family, the OFL, and the Ontario Health Coalition have all been calling for a coroner’s inquest.

Meanwhile, the ombudsman is investigating whether the regional LHIN properly consulted the public on changes to the NHS, including closure of ERs in Fort Erie and Port Colborne.

OPSEU has been running a campaign encouraging individuals to write an e-letter to their MPP about this issue. To date, more than 3,000 postcards and e-letters have been sent to Ontario MPPs. Have your say. Go to http://www.avoidingzero.ca

The Ontario Health Coalition is joining the call for a coroner’s inquest into the death of Reilly Anzovino after a Boxing Day car accident. Ms. Anzovino was taken by ambulance to Welland because the closest emergency department in Fort Erie was recently closed due to budget cuts. She passed away prior to arriving at the hospital. This is the second death since the emergency department closures at Fort Erie and Port Colborne, raising questions about whether these changes have contributed to avoidable fatality.

“This raises the issue of the human costs of hospital budget cuts across Ontario,” said Natalie Mehra, Director of the Ontario Health Coalition. “Hospital officials, consultants and the government have consistently downplayed the risks associated with closing small communities’ emergency departments. They have even tried to sell the cuts as improvements and quality care.”

Ambulances are now directed to the Welland hospital 43 km away. Since ambulances cannot carry blood – often needed in car accident traumas – there is widespread concern in the community that the removal of the emergency department in Fort Erie may be a contributing factor in Ms. Anzovino’s death.

Prior to the closure of the Emergency Departments in Niagara, the Ontario Health Coalition conducted in-depth interviews with 50 paramedics across Ontario. The paramedics were unanimous in their concern about local ER closures. All stated that ambulances cannot replace a hospital emergency department.

If there were an ‘acronym of the year award’ in health circles, 2009’s would be ALC – Alternate Level of Care. They are the patients that health policy planners used to call “bed blockers” until the families of these individuals had something to say about it.

In 2007 the government tightened up the definition of ALC and thereby created an artificial crisis when hospitals suddenly discovered that they were full of ALC patients.

By definition, an ALC patient is someone occupying a hospital bed after his or her acute care treatment was complete. Presumably ongoing care, including rehab, could be conducted elsewhere, like home care or in a long-term care home.

Last year hospitals were facing an inflation rate of about 4.5 per cent, but only received 2.1 per cent. With no room left to cut, and with the LHINs breathing down their neck about ALC, the race was on to clear the beds.

In 2010 most hospitals are still struggling thanks to an impending funding freeze, but now so are the Community Care Access Centres (CCACs) and the long-term care sectors due to the resulting influx of ALC patients.

Don Ford, the CEO of the Central East CCAC, appeared before the Local Health Integration Network January 19th to give an update on what the LHIN described as his “unenviable job.”

Ford is unable to balance his budget due to a massive increase in patients seeking home care in this sprawling region east of Toronto.

Many of these ALC patients are arriving as a result of a LHIN initiative to divert patients from hospital ERs.

Other changes made by the province are also pressuring the budget. The CCACs are being impacted by a removal of a cap on the number of hours of care a home care patient can receive. Ford now has to look for money to pay agencies to compensate contract staff for stat holidays, a recent requirement from the Ministry. There is also the impact of the coming blended sales tax on medical supplies.

Ford said he’s received 3,000 additional clients this year, and has a waiting list of about 2,000. Both low and medium acute patients are waiting for service. Only the most urgent cases are being seen.

He says those who are left to wait often end up back at the hospital as their situation worsens.

He has taken the step of giving his case managers a kind of “bank account” allotment of service that they have to manage, putting pressure on the front lines to determine who gets care and who waits.

In his search for solutions, Ford hired a consultant to conduct a review. Among other findings, the consultant concluded that it wasn’t necessarily desirable from a cost perspective to always divert from the hospital. The cost of providing some rehab services was actually less in the hospital than in the “hospital without walls,” as Ford referred to the CCACs.

When asked by the LHIN about other community agencies that clients could be diverted to, Ford said they were less likely to want to go when they had to pay for their care.

Pay for their care?

It seems no matter how you push around the problem, it always comes back to this.

We can pay a reasonable amount through our taxes and provide quality care for everyone. Or we can cut taxes and leave the most vulnerable to cope on their own.

Ford says he needs another $5-$6 million to operate with, a figure he says is consistent with the level of funding received by other CCACs in the province.

Meanwhile, with a freeze on funding imminent, hospitals in the same LHIN are looking at what services they can divert to the community to save money. They may wish to think twice before assuming the CCAC can take their patients.

They lined up at the Central East LHIN January 19 to warn of impending cuts in the event of a funding freeze. Ontario Shores CEO Glenna Raymond says a freeze would take them from a $1 million surplus to a $4 million deficit. While $2 million could be found in “efficiencies” and increased hospital revenues (ie. parking rates), Raymond said they would have to cut services to balance their budget. Rik Ganderton, CEO of the Rouge Valley, said he would have to cut $2.5 million in services in the event of a freeze. Rouge needs to run a surplus to cover capital costs not funded by government. Last year Rouge spent $3.5 million to replace boilers at Scarborough Centenary Hospital. … Hospitals are not the only health providers in trouble. The Central East CCAC reported they couldn’t balance their budget until March 2011. CEO Don Ford told the CE LHIN he had a waiting list of 2,000 clients. The CCAC is only taking the most acute patients. CE LHIN Chair Foster Loucks said Ford had an unenviable job. He could have added, except for his. … Meanwhile, with no expectation they’ll actually get it, the CE LHIN has put together a business plan that calls for 10 additional staff. CEO Deborah Hammons she said she wanted the Ministry to know what it takes to get the work done. … At the same meeting Loucks expressed frustration over the ability of the LHIN to transfer funds based on local priorities. “I’m concerned that we’re being turned into bureaucrats here,” he said. OPSEU has argued from the start that the LHINs would be carrying out Ministry directives with very little local control. The Ministry, in turn, claims every unpopular decision is made by the LHIN. Some would say this is by design. Want to send the government a message about freezing hospital funding? Go to http://www.avoidingzero.ca