COVID infections continue to drive up hospital costs and inpatient hospitalizations in Ontario. For the most recent fiscal year (April 1, 2022- March 31, 2023) hospital stays related to COVID cost $1.221 billion, according to new CIHI data. This is about 4% of total hospital spending, creating a very significant
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Defend Public Healthcare: Health care capacity crisis? Wait ’til you see what Ford has planned.
Despite the current health care capacity crisis, the Ford government plans to cut health care service levels. Hospitals: The news is bad for hospital services. The new Financial Accountability Office (FAO) report on the government’s health care funding plan reports the government plans 3,000 new beds over the next decade — that’s about
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: The war on women’s wages and the war on broader public sector workers
Women comprise 74% of the Ontario education, health care, and social assistance workforce. A strong female majority is present in all three of these sectors but is especially marked in health care and social assistance, where 762,800 women work. These three industries account for 31% of all women employees in Ontario. So
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Ontario hospital and LTC staffing and capacity plans: worse than you thought
By 2027 the PC health care funding plan falls $21.3 billion short, their hospital bed plan falls 500 beds short, their plan to free up hospital capacity by moving hospital patents to long-term care is unlikely to work, and their nurse and PSW staffing plan will fall 33,000 short according
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: There’s money galore for private clinics — while the PCs starve health care
Actual provincial program spending is much less than “planned” Provincial Spending was $6.4 billion less than planned over the first 9 months of the fiscal year 2022/3 according to the Financial Accountability Office (FAO). That is 5.0% less than budgeted. After the first half of the year, the FAO had
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Revenue is flowing in — but harder times are ahead for public sector services
As expected, Ontario government revenue is way up — $16.6 billion higher than the forecast in the Budget just six months ago. That’s an average increase of $2.7 billion per month — or up another 1.5% every month. The quarterly increases reported are also growing from $1.2 billion in the first quarter
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Four Ways the Ford Government is Privatizing Hospitals
Premier Ford wants for-profit surgical clinics — but that is just one area where his government is privatizing hospitals. Unfortunately, there is so much more. The privatized American heath care disaster is on full display right on our doorstep. According to the US government 31.6 million Americans have no
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: 33,000 missing Ontario hospital jobs and the hospital capacity crisis
Hospitals in provinces other than Ontario have 18% more staff than hospitals in Ontario. Much, but not all of this is due to low levels of inpatient staffing in Ontario. In that area, hospitals outside of Ontario have 38.7% more staff. Understaffing: Ontario hospital full time equivalent (FTE) jobs are
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Compensation for hospital workers has declined for years. But Ford still wants more
Despite the urgent attempts of the Ford government to decrease the real wages of hospital workers (via Bill 124 and their plan to appeal the courts declaring that legislation unconstitutional), the truth is that spending on compensation by hospitals has become a smaller and smaller part of hospital budgets for
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Huge cuts in public sector wages predicted
The Ontario Financial Accountability Office (FAO) expects average 1.7% wage “increases” in the public sector and 4.6% annual inflation over 2021/22 – 2023/24. As a result, it concludes real wages will decline 11.3% over this three year period. This would radically deepen the trend towards lower wages during the last ten
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Hospital, long-term care funding cut by the Ford Conservative government
The Financial Accountability Office has released the Ford PC government’s funding plans for the various health care sub-sectors. The news is not good. The funding plans for 2022/3 in several key line items are down compared to actual funding in 2021/2: Funding plans for long-term care services are down $26
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: The government has plenty of money to address the healthcare crisis. They just won’t
The Ford government re-released its spring Budget this week with a new first quarter fiscal and economic update, providing a little bit more information, albeit from a government with a track record for wildly inaccurate Budget plans. The increases in spending announced are so tiny they can all be
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Violence is widespread and growing in Ontario health care
Contrary to popular perception, there are more assaults in hospitals than in any other industry. Long-term are facilities are also major site for assaults. Health care as a whole has by far the most assaults that result in lost time injuries – far, far more than any other sector. Assaults in hospitals
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Declining hospital bed capacity continues under Ford government
The massive decline in hospital beds in Ontario since the early 1990s is, by now, well known. Less well known is that hospital beds per capita have continued to decline since, at least, 2010. This chart excludes Neonatal ICU beds and bassinets. CIHI does not report data, in this case, for
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Ford government stumbles into a health care staffing crisis
Job vacancies across the Ontario economy have sky-rocketed over the last two years, with a ten percent increase in 2020 and a 66% increase in 2021. Compounded that represents a 82% increase in job vacancies. Correspondingly the average offered hourly wage for all occupations went up 4.6% in Ontario (to
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Spending on health must get much larger
The long term fiscal and economic outlook released this week by Ontario’s Financial Accountability Office (FAO) shows that big increases in health care spending are required in the years ahead. The FAO forecasts that provincial government spending on health care will increase from an average of 6.4% of gross domestic
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Health care support workers have the highest number of workplace injuries
Lost time injury (LTI) claims for workers compensation by health care support workers have shot up in the last few years, even before COVID-19. For many years, claims were in the 2,500 range, before starting an upward track in 2014, rising to 4,271 in 2019, just before COVID-19 hit.
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: The Ford PC government thanks hospital employees by telling them to work harder for less
With as much fanfare as it could muster, the Ford PC government has re-announced its Budget plan of $300 million for hospitals to deal with the backlog of surgeries and procedures caused by the COVID-19 shut down of hospital services. Despite the fanfare, the Financial Accountability Office (FAO) has reported
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Doug Ford and the PCs plan another decade of austerity — except even harsher this time
Ontario’s Financial Accountability Office (FAO) reports that the nominal health care funding increases planned by the Ford PC goverment between 2019/20 to 2029-30 fall well short of the nominal increases over the previous nine years (2010/11-2019/20, the period of public sector austerity that followed the last recession). Indeed, as the
Continue readingDefend Public Healthcare: Ford PC government plans years of cuts to hospital services
The pandemic led to a brief reprieve from the austerity that has bedevilled Ontario hospital care since the great recession. After decades of being on par with other provinces, hospital funding fell far behind the rest of Canada. At the start of the pandemic the Ontario government was obsessed with
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