Cut back and hope no one gets hurt?
In May, responding to the recent problems with chemotherapy mixtures, the Ontario Hospital Association distanced the contracting out of chemo mixtures from the cost cutting that is so widespread in…
Doug Allan
Ambulances and Public Health get cash while other sectors starve
From time to time there are rumors that EMS (ambulance services) and municipal public health services may move over to the tender mercies of the Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs),…
Doctors get lion’s share of Budget funding
Forget all the government Budget rhetoric about better home care. The real winners are the docs. The Ontario Budget Estimates are out and the line item primarily covering the doctors…
Are employer paid drug plans unsustainable?
A Great West Life Assurance executive recently claimed that private insurance for drug plans was becoming unsustainable — unless changes are made. Almost all private drug insurance plans are paid…
Government: "collective bargaining is achieving results & protecting services"
Yesterday I noted that the Liberal Budget plainly states that they are planning many more years of austerity. So how does it see collective bargaining with public employees? And, moreover,…
Health care spending continues decline
Contrary to the hysteria from conservatives, health care spending continues to decline as a percentage of the provincial budget. Last year, health care accounted for 38.5% of total expenditures, this…
Now the doctors speak out about hospital cuts
Scarborough General Hospital. Photo by Benson Kua While physicians and surgeons have not usually been at the forefront of campaign against cutbacks, more of them have begun to express concerns…
Ontario Finance Minister plans cuts in public services
The Ontario government just lopped another $2.1 billion off their 2012-13 deficit estimate, cutting it from $11.9 billion (as of January) to $9.8 billion. This means that since 2010 when…
Are Ontario P3 projects plagued by corruption?
A commission of inquiry has heard that SNC-Lavalin deliberately went around Quebec’s political party financing rules, leading to a flurry of donations to the governing Quebec Liberal Party in 2009.…
Ontario P3 fiasco: $90 million cost to finance $59 million loan
The majority of the costs reported by the Auditor General for the cancellation of the Mississauga gas plant were payments to the U.S. based investment firm that provided financing for…
Chemo fiasco – – the real perils of secrecy
Martin Regg Cohn, Queen’s Park columnist for the Toronto Star, expressed his outrage at some length today over the College of Pharmacists not answering media questions quickly enough about the…
Public sector employment in Ontario falls short of other provinces
Yesterday, I noted that public sector employment in Ontario has declined as a percentage of total employment. But public sector employment in Ontario is also lower when compared with other…
Too many public sector workers in Ontario?
Opponents of public services often try to portray the public sector as having grown disproportionately. In fact, since 1976, the size of the number of public sector employees has not…
Government promise of 60 hospital beds for Windsor is much less than it seems
The Ontario government has finally taken some steps to respond to the long-standing problem of bed shortages in Windsor, promising 60 new beds. Quite a turn-around, given the full-on attack…
English reforms lose their appeal in Ontario?
England has had a disproportionate impact on health care reform in Ontario over the last decade or so –under both Liberal and Progressive Conservative governments. After the election of a…
Less nursing, more medical errors
Recent Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) data indicates that Ontario has a relatively high number of “nursing-sensitive adverse events” compared to other provinces. An “adverse event” (or “medical error”)…
Ontario homes:1 hour less care per elder per day
The death of a resident at a Toronto long-term care facility, allegedly at the hands of another resident, has raised concerns about inadequate staffing levels in Ontario. Recent Statistics Canada…