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Despite this being a newly introduced bill, Laronde said front-line care workers at long-term care facilities in Ontario have been fighting to have this for years. "This campaign (to legislate more time for individual long-term care residents) has been going on for many years and it's finally got a bill," said Laronde. MPP Gilles Bisson (NDP - Timmins-James Bay), explained, "It's a bill that has yet to be debated. It's been introduced. We're waiting for it to be debated." The fact the bill was introduced by a the health critic of the NDP doesn't mean the Liberals will automatically shoot it down as an act of partisan politics, said Bisson.

"You don't have enough time to sit and talk with them. It's always a rush. Everything has time constraints. You have to be in the dining room by 8:30; you have to be out by whenever; you have to have a shower today - I mean, that's their home. And you actually want to sit with them and talk with them, but you just don't have the time. You can't even get to know your residents. You know them by seeing them every day but you don't really get to know their background, or their history, you know, what they did before. You try to get to know them but you don't have the time to spend with them." If Bill 188 passes, all long-term care homes in the province will be required to stafftheir facilities adequately enough to provide a minimum four-hour standard of care for each resident each day.

"There are a number of bills put forward, quite frankly, by members of the opposition that wind up becoming law," he said. "In fact, France Gélinas has been very successful in putting forward a number of private member's bills that the government adopted as their own bill." The Extendicare Timmins workers intend to hold information pickets again on Thursday and Friday. © 2016 Postmedia Network Inc. All rights reserved. Illustration: • Ron Grech, The Daily Press / Front-line care staffat Extendicare Timmins held an information picket Wednesday afternoon to express their support for Bill 188 which is currently going through the Ontario legislature. The NDPinitiated bill, referred to the Time To Care Act, would make a minimum four-hour daily care a legal standard for long-term care residents.

£7 an hour, receives an extra £1 an hour for a night shift and £2 an hour for weekends.

"The NHS encourages you to have these NVQs, all this training, improve your knowledge, and then they [private care companies] come along and it all comes to nothing.

Care UK expects to make a profit "of under 6%" by the end of the three-year contract

£700,000 operating profit in the six months between September last year and March this year,

In 1993 the private sector provided 5% of the state-funded services given to people in their homes, known as domiciliary care. By 2012 this had risen to 89% – largely driven by the local authorities' need for cheaper ways to deliver services and the private sector's assurance that they could provide the answer. More than £2.7bn is spent by the state on this type of care every year. Private providers have targeted wages as a way to slice out profits, de-skilling the sector in the process.

1.4 million care workers in England are unregulated by any professional body and less than 50% have completed a basic NVQ2 level qualification, with 30% apparently not even completing basic induction trainin

Today 8% of care homes are supplied by private equity-owned firms – and the number is growing. The same is true of 10% of services run for those with learning disabilities

William Laing

report on private equity in July 2012

"It makes pots of money.

Those profits – which are made before debt payments and overheads – don't appear on the bottom line of the health firms' company accounts, and because of that corporation tax isn't paid on them.

Some of that was in payments on loans issued in Guernsey, meaning tax could not be charged. Its sister company, Silver Sea, responsible for funding the construction of Care UK care homes, is domiciled in the tax haven of Luxembourg

Bridgepoint

.voterDiv .ob_bctrl{display:none;} .ob_pdesc IMG{border:none;} .AR_1 .ob_what{direction:ltr;text-align:right;clear:both;padding:5px 10px 0px;} .AR_1 .ob_what a{color:#999;font-size:10px;font-family:arial;text-decoration: none;} .AR_1 .ob_what.ob-hover:hover a{text-decoration: underline;} .AR_1 .ob_clear{clear:both;} .AR_1 .ob_amelia, .AR_1 .ob_logo, .AR_1 .ob_text_logo {display:inline-block;vertical-align:text-bottom;padding:0px 5px;box-sizing:content-box;-moz-box-sizing:content-box;-webkit-box-sizing:content-box;} .AR_1 .ob_amelia{background:url('http://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/ob_logo_16x16.png') no-repeat center top;width:16px;height:16px;margin-bottom:-2px;} .AR_1 .ob_logo{background:url('http://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/ob_logo_67x12.png') no-repeat center top;width:67px;height:12px;} .AR_1 .ob_text_logo{background:url('http://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/ob_text_logo_66x23.png') no-repeat center top;width:66px;height:23px;} .AR_1:hover .ob_amelia, .AR_1:hover .ob_logo, .AR_1:hover .ob_text_logo{background-position:center bottom;} .AR_1 .ob_org_header { border-top: 10px solid #D61D00; display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-top: 5px; } More from the guardian Rogeting: why 'sinister buttocks' are creeping into students' essays 08 Aug 2014 Theatre's decision to ban Jewish film festival is 'thin end of wedge' 09 Aug 2014 Sir Paul Nurse: 'I looked at my birth certificate. That was not my mother's name' 09 Aug 2014 Adventures in contraception: eight women discuss their choices 10 Aug 2014 Child prison deaths 08 Aug 2014 [?] .voterDiv .ob_bctrl{display:none;} .ob_pdesc IMG{border:none;} .AR_2 .ob_what{direction:ltr;text-align:right;clear:both;padding:5px 10px 0px;} .AR_2 .ob_what a{color:#999;font-size:10px;font-family:arial;text-decoration: none;} .AR_2 .ob_what.ob-hover:hover a{text-decoration: underline;} .AR_2 .ob_clear{clear:both;} .AR_2 .ob_amelia, .AR_2 .ob_logo, .AR_2 .ob_text_logo {display:inline-block;vertical-align:text-bottom;padding:0px 5px;box-sizing:content-box;-moz-box-sizing:content-box;-webkit-box-sizing:content-box;} .AR_2 .ob_amelia{background:url('http://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/ob_logo_16x16.png') no-repeat center top;width:16px;height:16px;margin-bottom:-2px;} .AR_2 .ob_logo{background:url('http://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/ob_logo_67x12.png') no-repeat center top;width:67px;height:12px;} .AR_2 .ob_text_logo{background:url('http://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/ob_text_logo_66x23.png') no-repeat center top;width:66px;height:23px;} .AR_2:hover .ob_amelia, .AR_2:hover .ob_logo, .AR_2:hover .ob_text_logo{background-position:center bottom;} .AR_2 .ob_org_header { border-top: 10px solid #D61D00; display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-top: 5px; } /* updated via mysql on 2014-04-08 */ .AR_2 .ob_what { display: block; } /* added via mysql on 2014-06-20 */ .OUTBRAIN:hover .ob_what a { text-decoration: underline; } .ob_box_cont.AR_2 { padding-bottom: 5px; } /* end mysql add */ /* added via mysql on 2014-07-14 */ .AR_2 .ob_org_header span { color: #999; font-family: arial; font-size: 11px; font-weight: normal; display: block; } /* end 2014-07-14 */ More from around the webPromoted content by Outbrain http://paid.outbrain.com/network/redir?p=0iZOm4XuGW6R5uuT6ZFciNevzJlIfmxs0SRwpiMrH7gWrMXoPie4vIA9PlhaEW%2BXNi57pCgl9j8yOE3HuJT75pwCLNj4n18v3EKQDEV0YFQjOBxc46mOs

"Of course, there is no such thing as a perfect health system and it certainly doesn't reside in any one country," Mark Britnell, global chairman for health at the consulting giant KPMG, writes in his new book, In Search of the Perfect Health System. "But there are fantastic examples of great health and health care from around the world which can offer inspiration."

As a consultant who has worked in 60 countries - and who receives in-depth briefings on the health systems of each before meeting clients - Mr. Britnell has a unique perspective and, in the book, offers up a subjective and insightful list of the traits that are important to creating good health systems. If the world had a perfect health system, he writes, it would have the following qualities: the values and universal access of the U.K.; the primary care of Israel; the community services of Brazil; the mentalhealth system of Australia; the health promotion philosophy of the Nordic countries; the patient and community empowerment in parts of Africa; the research and development infrastructure of the United States; the innovation, flair and speed of India; the information, communications and technology of Singapore; the choice offered to patients in France; the funding model of Switzerland; and the care for the aged of Japan.

In the book, Mr. Britnell elaborates on each of these examples of excellence and, in addition, provides a great precis of the strengths and weaknesses of health systems in 25 countries. The chapter on Canada is appropriately damning, noting that this country's outmoded health system has long been ripe for revolution, but the "revolution has not happened."

Why? Because this country has a penchant for doing high-level, in-depth reviews of the health system's problems, but puts all its effort into producing recommendations and none into implementing them. Ouch. "Canada stands at a crossroads," Mr. Britnell writes, "and needs to find the political will and managerial and clinical skills to establish a progressive coalition of the willing."

The book's strength is that it does not offer up simplistic solutions. Rather, it stresses that there is no single best approach because all health systems are the products of their societies, norms and cultures. One of the best parts of the book - and quite relevant to Canada - is the analysis of funding models. "The debate about universal health care is frequently confused with the ability to pay," Mr. Britnell writes. He notes that the high co-payments in the highly praised health systems of Asia would simply not be tolerated in the West.

But ultimately what matters is finding an approach that works, not a perfect one: "This is the fundamental point. There is no such thing as free health care; it is only a matter of who pays for it. Politics is the imperfect art of deciding 'who gets what, how and when.' " The book stresses that the challenges are the same everywhere: providing high-quality care to all at an affordable price, finding the work force to deliver that care and empowering patients. To do so effectively, you need vision and you need systems. Above all, you need the political will to learn from others and put in place a system that works.

Karl Rinas, 61, who was treated for a bleeding ulcer at a Leamington, Ont., hospital last February, says he ended up wiping down the bathroom himself after his complaints about the dried liquid waste he found on the floor and toilet seat failed to get a reaction, but he worried about older, less mobile patients.

Despite all her efforts, Martin says she has no doubt that the antibiotic-resistant superbug Clostridium difficile infection her mother contracted soon after surgery was related to the hospital's level of cleanliness.

"I know everybody nowadays has to work more with less, but to me, a hospital should be absolutely clean," she said.

Of the respondents who wrote into the fifth estate's survey about being harmed in hospital, most said the harm was a hospital-acquired infection such as MRSA and C. difficile.

Unlike in the food industry, there are no standardized inspections for cleanliness in hospitals.

A World Health Organization report that compared Canada's infection data with that of 12 other wealthy countries found that Canada had the second-highest prevalence (11.6 per cent) of hospital-acquired infections after New Zealand — much higher than that of Germany (3.6 per cent) or France (4.4 per cent).

Is outsourcing to blame?Those who work in hospitals have pointed to the increased outsourcing of housekeeping in recent years as one reason behind the decline in hospital cleanliness that patients and hospital workers have observed

"There's no question there's been an impact on the quality of cleaning, and you can see that throughout the years as various hospitals have struggled with very high-profile superbug outbreaks," said Margi Blamey, spokesperson for the Hospital Employees' Union (HEU), which represents 41,000 hospital cleaning and support staff in B.C.

But health authorities in other countries are moving away from private cleaning services. Four years ago, Scotland reversed its decision to allow outsourcing of cleaning and catering services because it felt private contractors were not doing a good enough job keeping the spread of infections in check.

Blamey says as long as housekeeping is done on a for-profit basis, employers will reduce the number of staff and cut corners on staff training and cleaning supplies.

The Canadian Nosocomial Infection Surveillance Program is the closest thing to a federal overview that Canada has, but it relies on voluntary reporting by only 54 hospitals in 10 provinces, most of them teaching facilities, which, according to infection control experts, generally have higher infection rates than other acute care hospitals because they tend to see more seriously ill patients.

Michael Gardam, who oversees infection prevention and control at the three hospitals that are part of Toronto's University Health Network, agrees that hospitals have fewer resources for housekeeping these days and have to concentrate cleaning on areas that are most likely to transmit bacteria — primarily the surfaces that multiple patients touch.

"I probably get more emails about dust bunnies in the stairwells than anything else in the hospital, and yet, we've done that for a reason. You're not going to catch anything from a stairwell, but you're going to catch it from your bed rails," Gardam said.

About two-thirds of hospital-acquired infections are preventable, Gardam said, but making a direct link between cleanliness and infection is not as straightforward as it might seem. Some hospital-acquired infections such as ventilator-associated pneumonia or central line-associated bloodstream infections have little to do with the hospital environment and can be controlled through proper protocols around equipment use. But a superbug like C. difficile is a lot trickier because it is hard to pinpoint its source.

Increasing cleaning staff on nights and weekends could also help. A typical medium-sized B.C. hospital that contracts out cleaning services has 24 cleaners by day but only four at night, says Blamey, and workers are often not backfilled when ill or on vacation.

"Bacteria don't care what time it is," said Gardam.

The infection expert says it doesn’t matter whether a private or public entity oversees cleaning; both have had problems with cleanliness. The bottom line is that hospitals generally undervalue the importance of cleaning staff, Gardam said.

"People don't really think of them as part of the team, but if you think about how infections are spread in hospitals, they're actually an incredibly important part of the team that goes far beyond just the cosmetic appearance of the room."

It was a jurisdictional grey area, with both the college and Health Canada unable to agree on who was responsible for the facility.

The crisis has also raised questions about whether the privatization of health care has gone too far. The bags containing the chemotherapy drugs were filled with too much saline, watering down the medication by as much as 20 per cent. Some patients received the drugs for as long as a year. It's a grave warning that privatization has to stop, said New Democrat health critic France Gelinas.

"As those new companies spring up all over to do for-profit services for hospitals, the government basically stayed asleep at the switch," she said.

"They never looked at who was picking up this work to make sure that the level of oversight, the level of quality assurance that we had before were being transferred over. The work got transferred, the oversight did not."

A pharmacy expert, Jake Thiessen, will review the province's cancer drug system, Matthews said. A working group that includes doctors, Cancer Care Ontario, Health Canada and others are also looking at the problem.

ealth Canada and the Ontario College of Pharmacists are working to close that ga

Wright, who has diabetes and underwent a triple heart bypass three years ago, was in good health when she and two daughters drove to Vancouver and then Squamish, B.C., in August for a family wedding. On the return trip, the trio stopped for the night at a motel in a small town of fewer than 4,000 people called Vermillion, about 200 kilometres east of Edmonton. There, Wright took ill. She couldn't breathe and was having a difficult time walking, so her daughters rushed her to the local hospital.

When she got back to Garson, she and her husband, Jim, hitched up their trailer and went camping for two weeks. They had a wonderful time, but when they returned, there were two envelopes in the couple's mail box. One was a bill for several hundred dollars for examinations by three different doctors in Alberta. The other was a whopping $6,380 bill from an air ambulance company called STARS (Shock Trauma Air Rescue Society). Quite fittingly, Jean Wright was shocked when she opened the envelope, because she thought the flight was covered, she said in an interview at her Garson home.

Wright and her daughters had heard about the Alberta woman who was visiting family near Timmins when she went into early labour and had to be air-lifted to Sudbury. That woman was billed about $10,000 by Ontario's air ambulance service. After Amy Savill went public with her story, the Alberta and Ontario governments agreed to split the bill for the air ambulance. When Wright received her bill, she called one of her daughters and said the younger woman "almost fainted" when she heard the amount. Wright thought: "If I have to pay this bill, they're going to wait a long time. I don't have that kind of money." She is a retired school bus driver and her husband an Inco pensioner.

Wright visited the constituency office of her MPP, Nickel Belt New democrat France Gelinas, who is also her party's critic for Health and Long-Term Care. Gelinas wrote Health Minister dr. Eric Hoskins on Oct. 8, saying provincial governments should "pay the bill as a hospital emergency service when a patient is forced to take air or ground ambulances to the nearest hospital for the necessary emergency treatment. "Hospital and physician services are supposed to be free to all Canadians," wrote Gelinas. The Ontario Legislature is recessed this week and Gelinas hasn't received a reply from Hoskins, she said Thursday. She intends to speak with Hoskins about it Tuesday when the Legislature resumes sitting.

Wright contacted the Edmonton hospital about the smaller bill for doctors' services she received and was told to discard it. She hasn't contacted STARS, but Gelinas said her constituency staff will stay on the case. Gelinas wants Ontario's health minister to establish a policy in which air ambulance transportation for Ontarians out of province is paid by government if ordered by a physician. If Ontarians travelling outside the province require air ambulance transportation, and know they have to pay for it, many will not get the treatment they need because of that cost, said Gelinas.

"This is wrong," said Gelinas of someone like Wright being billed for transportation to get emergency care. The basic tenet of medicare is that all Canadians have access to good health care "no matter the thickness of their wallets. Gelinas, Nickel Belt federal NdP candidate Claude Gravelle and Sudbury federal NdP hopeful Paul Loewenberg have scheduled a news conference for Friday at 11 a.m. in front of Health Sciences North to talk about how the NdP health plan will improve health-care delivery for people in Northern Ontario.

Jean Wright shows off an invoice for more than $6,000 for an Alberta air ambulance ride on Thursday. Wright required medical care involving an air ambulance while on vacation in Alberta.

the impact of Liberal health-care policy in southern Ontario is "bad enough." The model Mehra said the province is using to centralize services into fewer communities is especially detrimental to the North. "That doesn't work for the south," she added. "It definitely, in no way, works for Northern Ontario." The state of Northern health care was brought to the floor of Queen's Park this week when, on Wednesday during Question Period, NDP health critic France Gélinas called on the government to stop continued cuts to care in the region. Funding based on volumes doesn't jibe with regional population distributions, Mehra said. "It just doesn't make any sense at all," she said, adding Northern Ontario has many common complaints with small, rural southern Ontario communities.

The coalition argues the entire Ontario system has received short shrift for years and is below the Canadian per capita average by about $350 per person. The provincial Liberals ended a four-year hospital base funding freeze in its latest budget, pledging to spend $60 million on hospital budgets, along with $75 million for palliative care and $130 million for cancer care. The Ontario Health Coalition - and Sault and Area Health Coalition - are not impressed. The local group argues on a regular bases, 22 admitted patients often wait in SAH's Emergency Department for inpatient beds and admitted patients stay in emergency for as long as five days. Patients are lined along hallways on the floors or put in areas that were designed to be stretcher storage areas or lounges with no call buttons, oxygen, out of the nurses' usual treatment areas. Late last month, the Ontario Health Coalition launched an Ontario-wide, unofficial referendum to raise awareness about what it contends is a system in critical condition. The unofficial referendum asks Ontarians if they're for or against the idea: "Ontario's government must stop the cuts to our community hospitals and restore services, funding and staffto meet our communities' needs for care." Ballot boxes will be distributed to businesses, workplaces and community

centres across the province before May 28, when votes will be tallied and presented to Premier Kathleen Wynne. "We have to make it so visible, and so impossible to ignore, the widespread public opposition to the cuts to local public hospitals so the province cannot continue to see all those cuts through," Mehra said. Similar public OHC-led lobbying helped limit and "significantly" change policy in a past Sault Area Hospital bid to usher in publicprivate partnerships (P3s), she added. "The referendum is a way to make that so visible, so impossible to ignore by the provincial government, that we actually stop the cuts," Mehra said. Other speakers Thursday included Sault coalition member Peter Deluca, who spoke of the many challenges his elderly parents have endured thanks to what he dubbed less-than-stellar hospital experiences. "We deserve the truth, we deserve answers, not just political talk," said Deluca, adding concerned citizens must band together in order to prompt change and halt healthcare cuts.

Sharon Richer, of Ontario Council of Hospital Unions/CUPE, said as a Health Sciences North employee, she's seen "first-hand" how cuts affect health care. "There won't be change if we don't make a ripple," she said. Laurie Lessard-Brown, president of Unifor Local 1359, told the meeting of how SAH's recent "wiping out" of the personal support worker classification is wreaking havoc on staff and patients, alike. Registered nurses and registered practical nurse must now pick up the slack, she added. "Morale is lowest I've ever seen," Lessard-Brown said. And, as recent as last Tuesday, Unifor learned of a further four full-time RPN positions being cut while supervisor positions were being added. "Cutting front-line workers is not acceptable," Lessard-Brown said. jougler@postmedia.com On Twitter: @JeffreyOugler © 2016 Postmedia Network Inc. All rights reserved.

Natalie Mehra, Ontario Health Coalition executive director, decries what she describes as the profound lack of funding being divvied out to Ontario hospitals during a town hall meeting Thursday evening, hosted by the Sault and Area Health Coalition at Royal Canadian Legion, Branch 25.

For instance, there would be no Medicare - the national achievement of which Canadians are proudest - had Ottawa not unilaterally imposed it across the country in the 1960s. Ontario was among the holdouts, until its then premier discovered that Ontarians wanted what the feds were offering. Today, the feds have that same advantage of popular support for reform.

A Canadian Medical Association (CMA) poll that mirrors the results of other polls shows Canadians are strongly supportive of major health care reforms in mental-health services (83 per cent), more affordable prescription drugs (80 per cent), palliative care (80 per cent) and home care (79 per cent), among other health services. Philpott is an ardent champion of "targeted funding," to ensure that federal money gets spent on the Grits' priorities of improved home care, palliative care and mental health treatment. By contrast, the sub-governments share the view of Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard, that "We are totally opposed to targeted funding." Give us the money, let us decide how to spend it.

Philpott's valid grievance is that the $41 billion Ottawa transferred to sub-governments during the previous 2004-2014 Health Accord, which expired two years ago, did not bring health-care reform. "We didn't buy change," as the minister puts it. This time, Ottawa wants to see results for its money. In a remarkable speech to the CMA this week, Philpott indicted the sub-governments for their routine violations of the Canada Health Act, which has undercut "a fair and just society." She condemned the system as plodding and unco-ordinated, an assessment few Canadians would disagree with.

And acceding to the subgovernment's rote demands - an increase in federal funds with no strings attached - holds exactly zero chance of forcing reform. After all, the health minister noted, there are many countries that spend less than Canada on health care, yet boast better health outcomes. Examples: Britain, Italy, Spain, Norway, Israel and Ireland, among others. The sub-governments should have seen this confrontation coming. A Harper government also frustrated with lack of health-care reform slashed the increase in federal health transfers from 6 per cent to 3 per cent in a bid to force better spending decisions on provinces and territories.

It will be a struggle for the sub-governments to marshal a convincing argument against Philpott's insistence that Ottawa must have a role in moving Canadian health care "from the middle of the pack to out in front." Here's what the traditional hands-off, no-strings-attached status quo has gotten us: The World Health Organization (WHO), an arm of the UN, ranks Canada a dismal 30th in quality of health care, trailing Colombia, Cyprus and Morocco. (France and Italy rank 1st and 2nd, respectively.) Total Canadian health-care spending has more than doubled, to $219 billion, over the past 15 years, with no comparable across-the-board improvement in quality of health of Canadians. And as a percentage of GDP, Canadian health care spending has jumped from 8.3 to 10.3 in that period.

Though Canadians’ public health care costs are down, we still spend a lot, $155 billion last year. And when you include private spending – all your out-of-pocket and private-insurance health costs – the total was $219 billion.

Frightening Canadians about “unsustainable” health care might be nonsense, but not pointless. If you frighten people enough they’ll even cheer a government that cuts health care. It’s been successful before.

The 5% shift was good news for private health companies. It gave Chretien room to make big corporate tax cuts. Everybody wins – except Canadians. And among us, sick, older, poor and working class Canadians were surely hit hardest.

But now at 71% publicly-paid, Canadian health care is more private than Germany (76% public), France (79% public), Japan (83%) or the UK (87%).

Remember, Trudeau’s first act in the Commons was to spend $4 billion a year on a tax cut with maximum benefit to incomes between $90,000 and $200,000.