St. Thomas forensic mental health centre opens with fanfare and problems
The bright and shiny new Southwest Centre for Forensic Mental Health has opened in St. Thomas with much fanfare and more than a few problems. The new building may “fight…
opseudiablogue
28 organizations call for public policy review on for-profit plasma collection
OPSEU is among twenty-eight organizations that have signed a public letter calling on Health Canada to consult before licensing the for-profit Canadian Plasma Resources to collect and pay for plasma…
Social Determinants: Where did 55,000 Ontario households go?
What happened to 55,000 low-income rental households in Ontario? Between the late 1990s and the early 2000s they simply disappeared from the census. A new report from the Ontario Non-Profit…
Social determinants more than cost of care key to sustainability
Critics of Medicare often point to Canada’s dubious population health record as evidence of the need for system reform, but seldom do these critics spend much time looking at the…
OHA silent about sudden departure of CEO and President
Pat, we hardly knew you. A year after being appointed OHA CEO and President, Pat Campbell has mysteriously disappeared from the OHA. In a remarkably short announcement June 12, the…
Aglukkaq might as well be talking about car washes and kittens
We’ve noted several times the absence of Federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq when it comes to media inquiries about issues within her jurisdiction. Her performance in Parliament likely gives us…
Among OECD, Only Mexico has fewer per capita hospital beds than Ontario
There are some that would like to portray labour and many of our community partners as being reactionary towards the shift of services from hospital to the community. The reality…
Nursing Home Inspectors: An old promise or a new one?
What is the value of a promise? In some cases we have chastised government over the lack promises kept, such as the 10-year mental health strategy that never materialized. Or…
Mental Health: Anti-stigma campaigns produce unintended consequences
There is no question that stigma is an obstacle to those seeking help for mental illness. The question is, once mental illness is accepted in the same way as any…
Will 100 new nursing home inspectors represent a tipping point?
Well that didn’t take long. Last week Health Minister Deb Matthews said she had asked officials to come forward with options on how to improve inspections in the province’s nursing…
Home care – it’s critical we get it right this time
Ontario’s Community Care Access Centres could have been very different had events unfolded differently in the early 1990s. At the beginning of that decade home care was considered to have…
Matthews seeks to enhance nursing home inspections – how about enough inspectors to get the job done?
For more than 30 minutes a resident of The Wexford went on a rampage, roaming the halls of the Scarborough long-term care facility, battering one woman before leaving his own…
Aborted Sudbury plan expected ALC patients to pick up tab for convalescent care
The Ontario government has always maintained that getting alternative level of care patients out of hospital is so much more cost-effective than having costly beds tied up with patients who…
Diluted chemo drug scandal — why was this ever contracted out?
It looked for a while that Marchese Hospital Solutions’ explanation for the diluted chemotherapy drug bags may have had legs, suggesting there was miscommunication between hospital purchasing agent Medbuy and…
Health care sustainability: evidence shows this debate should have been long over
Over the weekend CPAC was playing excerpts from two conferences – one on drug coverage the other on health care sustainability. The first, Rethinking Drug Coverage, was held in Ottawa…
Obesity rates rise – will Ontario implement the recommendations of its own panel?
Health prevention is one of those hands down winners. You ask people about health care reform, and almost everyone believes that moving health issues upstream has the potential to reduce…
More “transformation” — 53 jobs cut at Peterborough Regional
Peterborough’s regional hospital is losing more staff positions. The good news is the hospital administration isn’t at least pretending these new cuts are about “transformation” of the health system as…
Losing four pscyhiatrists at Grand River may very well be carelessness
Oscar Wilde’s character Lady Bracknell says in The Importance of Being Earnest: “to lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune … to lose both seems like carelessness.” Does…
Linda McQuaig for Mayor?
Linda McQuaig couldn’t resist. Standing at the Mayor’s podium at the Toronto City Hall council chambers, she told the Older Canadians Network: “I have never smoked crack cocaine.” Linda McQuaig…