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The Peterborough Examiner Mon Oct 19 2015

QUINTE WEST -Natalie Mehra was blunt with her assessment of the proposed cost-cutting measures facing Trenton Memorial Hospital. On a scale of one to ten, Mehra rated the severity of cuts at nine. "They are setting the ground work for the demise of the hospital. There will be no future in it," said the executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition. But the Coalition wants Quinte West and Brighton to keep fighting back, even harder than in previous years. "I am a bit worried because people get tired of fighting back. But our (the Coalition) message is that when you push back hard enough we can often win. Every community should be demanding long term stability when it comes to their hospitals. The bottom line is there should be a basket of good services available in every hospital," said Mehra.

The Coalition and Our TMH are planning a massive day of protest set for Friday, Nov. 13 at Trenton's Centennial Park beginning at 12- noon. Mehra said the protest will include the involvement from people from across eastern Ontario from Perth to Brockville and west to Quinte West and the Peterborough region. "We're asking community volunteers, residents, nurses, and medical staff to be there. It's extremely important," said Mehra. Trenton Memorial isn't the only small hospital that's being hit.

QUINTE WEST -- Sickened by service cuts, a Quinte West politician says the city should move even harder to get Trenton's hospital out of the QHC.

Coun. Sally Freeman made the comments following Tuesday's Ontario Health Coalitionbacked rally at Queen's Park.

Dozens of city residents rallied alongside hundreds of people from 10 other jurisdictions.

At a time when most of the patients should have been settling for the night, there was much loud laughing and talking, I presumed at the nurses' station. No one was visible in the hall and when I had to ring the bell to tell them the patient in the other bed, who was on oxygen and a catheter, was trying to get out of bed there was no response. I had to go to the door where a Loyalist student nurse saw me and responded and got attention for the other patient. During the day the staffing was adequate and good.

I understand as one of the cost-cutting measures they are laying off maintenance staff; this when they cannot now keep halls free of debris and no real cleaning is being done

The condition of the medical floor is deplorable. It is literally crumbling. Does that mean it is next for expensive upgrades?

March 04, 2015

THE LAYOFF AXE IS FALLING AGAIN AT QUINTE HEALTH CARE

Liberal government cuts of $11.5 million to Quinte Health Services will devastate hospital programs in the region23/November/2015 10:20 AM

Toronto ON- “Plans to cut hospital budgets in Picton, Trenton and Belleville by 11.5 million dollars will endanger patient care” said Michael Hurley, President of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions/CUPE. “The 84 staff positions eliminated and the program cuts across Quinte Health Care (QHC) will leave the Trenton hospital a shell ready for closure, shift services to Kingston where access is already a pressing issue and privatize and slash already threadbare hospital services to an unsustainable level,” Hurley said.

Mayor John Williams said Wednesday the city will forge ahead with an attempt to get Trenton Memorial removed from Quinte Health Care.

Fed up with the latest rounds of service cuts at TMH, Quinte West queued up behind a group in Prince Edward County calling themselves Patriots of our County Hospital, or POOCH, demanding local hospitals be yanked out of QHC.

Williams said the city will take a different tact. That means preparing a business case and presenting it to the southeast Local Health Integration Networks.

Government funding that is falling short of the increasing demand for certain surgeries sought locally has been blamed for the mounting wait times for several procedures including knee operations, hip replacement and cataract surgeries.

Trenton Memorial Hospital has the dubious honour of having the longest wait times for cataract surgeries in South East Ontario. Part of the problem involved Trenton losing funding that equated to costs for roughly 150 cases, creating a dilemma for ophthalmologists who book surgeries months in advance.

This week, QHC board member Doug McGregor confirmed the network is struggling to "try and live within the allocated volumes."

A rising workload means ambulances are not able to reach all emergency patients within provincial response times, Hastings-Quinte Emergency Medical Services Chief Doug Socha said, adding the only solution is more staff.

He said the service is stretched to "maximum capacity," and not only will some rural residents not get an ambulance during peak times, but Hastings County is paying thousands of dollars in overtime wages as well.

The "critical" problem isn't so much the current situation as the risk related to future calls, he said. Paramedics are busiest in the region's urban centres--and last year their response times actually improved.

May 11, 2016

The fates of some Quinte Health Care employees remain in limbo while executives await more information from Ontario’s health ministry. And while QHC executives describe staffing talks as saving jobs, the union representing registered nurses continues to predict it will be bad for patients. President and chief executive officer Mary Clare Egberts announced in November the corporation needed to cut $11.5 million from its 2016-2017 operating budget. To cope, senior staff and the board implemented an unprecedented reorganization of staffing across their four hospitals in Belleville, Picton, Bancroft and Trenton. They proposed slashing 162 positions of which 38 were vacant. The plan also called for the creation of 78 other jobs, with a net loss of 84. The figure was a worse-case scenario in which no staff accepted buyouts or moved within QHC.

Dr. Dick Zoutman, seen Quinte Health Care in Belleville, Ont., is an infectious disease specialist and professor in the school of medicine at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont.

March 31, 2014

Nearly 40 per cent of hospital infection control experts believe their hospital is not clean enough to prevent spread of the toxic gut infection C. difficile and other potentially lethal organisms, a national survey has found. About one-quarter million Canadians will be sickened this year with an infection they pick up in hospital, and death rates from highly drug-resistant microbes are rising. Yet the new survey found that just 62 per cent of lead infection control staff believe their hospital is sufficiently clean. “We’re just not achieving the results we need,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Dick Zoutman, an infectious disease specialist and professor in the school of medicine at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. The findings come from an online survey completed in 2012 and the first half of 2013 by infection control professionals at 119 hospitals nationwide. The survey was designed to assess how well infection control programs collaborate with environmental services — the people responsible for disinfecting patient rooms.

Tue, Apr 28th

26 full time and 27 part time registered nursing positions are being slashed in an effort to save $6 million.

Although there are numerous RN layoffs expected, there will be also positions made for Registered Practical Nurses and Personal Support Workers.

National Post Wed Sep 23 2015

New Canadian research is revealing an alarmingly high rate of human rush-hour-like traffic in operating rooms, possibly exposing patients to potentially "disastrous" bacterial infections with every swing of a door. Quebec researchers who secretly recorded how often staff entered or left an operating room during 100 hip or knee replacements - which require a "particularly aseptic environment" - found the doors were opened as many as 176 times during a single surgery.

Overall, there were about 71 door openings per surgery. With the average surgery lasting 112 minutes, this means a door opened every 1½ minutes. "I expected the number to be high, but not quite that high," said lead author Dr. Martin Bédard, an orthopedic surgeon at Hôpital de l'Enfant Jésus de Québec.

14/August/2015

Ottawa, ON –Cuts in surgery rumoured to come in 2016 are only the beginning as the Health Care Tomorrow project ( a collaboration of Brockville General Hospital, Hotel Dieu Hospital in Kingston, Lennox and Addington County General Hospital, Kingston General Hospital, Perth Smiths Falls District Hospital, Providence Care and Quinte Health Care ) prepares the ground for cuts to emergency and acute care services in smaller communities, the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions/CUPE charged today.“ Consultations held across the catchment area of these hospitals earlier this year promoted the idea that smaller communities should not expect a full range of hospital services. The latest announcement suggests that the push to integrate these institutions and cut, consolidate and privatize programs and services will intensify and will do that without meaningful public consultation, “ said Louis Rodrigues, First vice-president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions/CUPE.

August 31, 2015

Inefficient operation will soon lead in part to funding cuts for three southeastern hospital corporations, Quinte Health Care among them. The size of those cuts, however, depends upon the intervention of the South East Local Health Integration Network (LHIN). The LHIN’s chief executive officer, Paul Huras, said Monday the cuts will affect QHC, Kingston’s Providence Care and Brockville General Hospital. It could also affect Kingston General “minimally,” he said.

04/September/2015

Toronto ON- “The announcement by the South East LHIN that it plans to cut hospital budgets in the region of the province that includes Brockville, Perth/Smith’s Falls, Kingston, Quinte, Picton, Trenton and Belleville by $16 to $21 million dollars is staggering and will ultimately endanger patient care” said Michael Hurley, President of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions/CUPE. “This announcement comes on top of 4 years of budget cuts, which have reduced these hospitals budgets by 24% in real terms,” Hurley explained.

Hospital across the South East LHIN are cutting services in the face of a 5-year funding freeze imposed by the provincial Liberal government. An Ontario’s Auditor General report quotes studies which estimated that hospitals need a 5.8% increase in funding each year just to keep pace with the costs of drugs, medical technologies and doctors’ salaries which are rising faster than the general rate of inflation. The freeze has cut hospital budgets by 24% in real terms. Ontario hospitals were already the most efficient hospitals in the country with the fewest beds and staff and the shortest lengths of stay going into the budget freeze. Ontario spends $350 less per capita than any other province in Canada.

By Luke Hendry, The Intelligencer

June 23, 2015

Patients and health care workers agree on some of the top priorities for the health system, a regional survey has shown.

Dec 18, 2014

MP said health spending has increased

COBOURG -- Fears over the perceived privatization of health care in Canada spurred a recent protest.

North Bay Nugget Mon Nov 16 2015

The cold front that blew into the region Friday is nothing like the cold shoulder that hundreds of people gave the provincial government. More than 600 health care workers and residents were at Friday's rally in Trenton's Centennial Park protesting cuts to health care. Bus loads of unionized health care workers from across central and eastern Ontario descended on the park to attend the first in a series of four Ontario Health Coalition rallies being held across the province.

The health coalition and Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) are organizing a Take Back Our Hospital Rally for noon Nov. 30 at Lee Park in North Bay. Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition, stated previously the public is concerned about cuts at the North Bay Regional Health Centre, where 158 full-time equivalent jobs are being eliminated. Mehra said the recent cuts are among the worst in Ontario. "This routine of unstable funding and continuous cuts has to be stopped," she said during a teleconference town hall last month in North Bay in which more than 4,300 people participated.