Two community meetings around cuts to the Perth and Smiths Falls District Hospital drew significant crowds this week.
Cuts at the two-site rural hospital corporation are particularly severe. The Perth and Smiths Falls District Hospital is seeking to find 6 per cent in savings primarily through reductions to health resources used by the community, including a cut of 12 beds, six at each site.
This is only the beginning given every hospital is struggling with zero-based budgeting from the province that is expected to impact the bottom line to 2016-17. The situation is made worse at hospitals like Perth and Smiths Falls due to the simultaneous implementation of a new funding formula that doesn’t appear to appreciate the unique demographic demands of the region.
The Health Minister and local opposition MPP Randy Hillier say services are not being cut, but are being reallocated. But is this really true?
The cuts include physiotherapy where the equivalent of more than three full-time positions will be lost at the hospital.
Numerous provincial reports have acknowledged that seniors are having trouble connecting with publicly funded physiotherapy.
Last week it was the turn of Dr. Samir Sinha, the provincial lead on Ontario’s Seniors Strategy. Sinha called for more publicly funded physiotherapy in the community, but the last OHIP-licensed private physiotherapy clinic to open in Ontario was in 1964. Health Minister Deb Matthews has been silent on this issue despite cuts to physiotherapy in about half of Ontario’s hospitals during the past year. This is one more.
OPSEU Diablogue 