Relationship building with the LHINs
Health care providers have found religion when it comes to involving patients in the planning and decision-making process. At this year’s OHA HealthAchieve every administrator was quick to extol the…
LHINs
Patient Transfer Changes Continue — Boon or Bust for EMS?
Another LHIN-based initiative to restructure “non-urgent patient transfers” is underway. Non-urgent transfers are ambulance-like transfers for patients from hospital to hospital, from hospital to long-term care, or from hospital to…
LHINs Fall Short: Privatization and Cuts
Below is the recent submission of OCHU to the Standing Committee on Social Policy of the Ontario Legislature:The Ontario Council of Hospital Workers (OCHU/CUPE) represents 30,000 hospital and long-term care…
LHINs should integrate with the Ministry of Health — Thomas
OPSEU President Warren (Smokey) Thomas appears before the Standing Committee on Social Policy this morning in Kingston. The Queen’s Park Committee, made up of MPPs from all three parties, is…
CCACs not entirely to blame for high home care administrative costs
What to do with the Community Care Access Centres? Yesterday’s Toronto Star column by Bob Hepburn suggests we should roll them into the Local Health Integration Networks and send the…
Want direct front line input into health planning? How about whistleblower protection?
A few years ago we were in discussion with the Central East Local Health Integration Network about the idea of having a number of consultative committees made up of unionized…
Do LHINs need boards at all if they are simply to be the arm of the Ministry?
Tom Closson calls it the Goldilocks principle. What is the point where governance within our health system is “just right?” Writing in Healthy Debate, the former CEO of the Ontario…
Should the LHINs really be the e-Harmony of health care providers?
When the province decided to call its most recent crown agencies Local Health Integration Networks, it was clear where the emphasis lay. Rather than plan a system based on need,…
Health Links attract huge audience at HealthAchieve
There was a kind of sliding sound and then a rattle as a woman fell to the floor during Tuesday afternoon’s session of the Ontario Hospital Association’s HealthAchieve. When someone…
Private Hospitals in Specialty Clinic Clothing
The provincial government’s mid-summer announcement that regulations under the Independent Health Facilities (IHF) Act will be drafted to permit “specialty clinics” raises some serious concerns. Changes in the LHINS enabling…
De-integrating home support services in Ontario
Ontario has promised three million new hours of home care personal support services over the next three years. While it sounds like a lot, keep in mind that about 32…
LHINs Undercut Integration
Even though I have not met the CEO of the Sault Hospital in northern Ontario I expect he is an honorable person with a difficult task: to justify the unjustifiable.…
Another Local Lab Service Lost
A column in the January 8 Sault Star documents a rural community losing its blood taking services. The Thessalon Hospital, serving Thessalon and area, a satellite hospital of Sault St.…