With staffing and capacity levels in a dire situation in rural hospitals across Ontario, a new report from CUPE and the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions is showing just how bad it is.
Michael Hurley, the President of the OCHU, says right now, Ontario has the fewest number of acute care hospital beds of any province, and the fewest of any developed country in the world. He says the problem is getting worse because of a growing and aging population.
"There's incredible pressure on the hospitals. At the same time, you've got staff giving up working because they're so exhausted mentally, and they despair not being able to provide a high quality of patient care. As a result, you've got a staffing crisis which is hitting communities like Wingham and Chesley and St. Marys and so many more," Hurley shared.
Hurley says the government needs to make the public healthcare sector a priority and invest at least $1.2 billion annually over the next 4 years to catch up and mitigate what the report is calling a staffing and capacity crisis.
Staffing issues in rural hospitals have caused numerous closures in rural emergency departments across Ontario, like Wingham, Chesley, St. Marys, Durham and many, many more. Hurley says the report addresses the state of things in Wingham, Listowel and Stratford, which are just a handful of communities being heavily affected by this situation.
"The staffing gap is enormous. We anticipate in Wingham and Listowel, we need to add 74 staff and 17 beds in the next 4 years. For Stratford and the other hospitals in that alliance, we'd be looking at 246 staff and 42 beds," said Hurley.
According to the report and Hurley, the government has to focus more on bolstering staffing and bed capacity over the next few years to avoid an even worse state of public healthcare.
"You know that's only gonna be possible if we stop losing the staff we have. We have to retain the staff we have now, we have to have a much more ambitious and vigorous training program than what the government has announced so far. We have to incentivize people who have left nursing and other healthcare professions, but remain regulated by the College of Nurses and other professional colleges, we have to incentivize them to come back to work," Hurley explained.
With respect to staff, Hurley notes the province needs to do more to retain staff and incentivize new staff far more than what is currently in place. He says despite the province introducing some new schooling incentives and recruiting international nurses, it isn't enough.
"The numbers of foreign trained nurses and other healthcare workers are a drop in the bucket in terms of the 60,000 that are needed in hospitals, we believe, over the next 4 years, just to make a difference in terms of keeping ERs open, ending hallway medicine and dealing with the impact of an aging and growing population," Hurley shared bluntly.
The report claims that the government budgeted only a .5 percent increase on hospital spending this year, while a spending increase was made for for-profit clinics. Hurley says this is completely backwards and ineffective.
"Hospital's costs are going up at like 5 percent, because in addition to inflationary pressures, doctor's salaries are going up, pharmaceuticals that are provided free to patients have gone up significantly, medical technology is expensive. So, they're looking at real cuts t the same time that the government is spending 212 percent more on these private clinics, private surgeries," noted Hurley. "In addition to that, these private clinics draw away staff from the public sector. In Ottawa, the private surgical centre is offering nurses and clerical staff twice their salaries to go and work for them. That has the effect of depriving the Ottawa Hospital of staff who could be available to keep the ERs open, to staff up the cancer units, etcetera, as an example."
Hurley says he, the OCHU and CUPE don't believe private clinics are an effective solution at all, which is reflected in the report, as well.
"We don't believe that the private surgeries have been successful in any jurisdiction where they've been studied. Not in France, not in Australia, not in Britain and they're not gonna be here, they're no solution. What needs to happen is a vigorous move now to retain and recruit hopspital staff and to add bed capacity, and that's what we're calling on the provincial government to do," Hurley stated.
In terms of what people can do on an individual level, especially in rural areas, Hurley says we can take a page out of what Chesley has done recently.
"When a community like Chesley turns out almost 1,000 people to discuss the impact of the closure of the emergency department there, that has had, I think, a significant impact. This government was elected on a promise to end hallway medicine, and we still have at last count, 1,291 people on hallway stretchers waiting for beds," Hurley exclaimed.
In the past, provincial governments have been pressured to make hospital spending a priority, and Hurley says that can happen again with this government and he thinks that rural communities may actually have a bigger voice than some may think. He says that's because a lot of the elected MPP's that make up the Doug Ford led Conservatives are from rural ridings, and if people keep up pressure on their elected officials, it could go a long way toward instituting some major changes that ultimately, as Hurley notes, benefit us all.
The full report for Stratford can be seen here: https://cupe.on.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Report-Stratford-hospital-capacity-and-privatization-2023Sept1.pdf
The report regarding Wingham and Listowel can be seen here: https://cupe.on.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Report-Listowel-Wingham-hospital-capacity-and-privatization-2023Sept1final.pdf
