Group items tagged funding - CUPE Health Care

Ontario vows 'self-directed' home care; Pilot project would give patients or their care... - 0 views

www.fpinfomart.ca/doc/doc_display.php?key=pr|245142|ntgm|20150514|220448040

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The Globe and Mail Thu May 14 2015
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n a bid to respond to a blistering report on home care in Ontario, the provincial government is promising a series of minor fixes to the system, including a Canadian-first pilot project that would give patients or their caregivers money to spend on the home health services of their choosing. Details were scant on the government's plans for experimenting with "self-directed care," an approach that Health Minister Eric Hoskins said is already working well for some parents of autistic children who have been given the flexibility to spend public funds on the programs they believe are best for their children. Dr. Hoskins said that although it was too early to say where the pilot programs would be located, who would qualify or how much they would cost, he was excited about eventually offering more choice to patients as they heal or age at home.
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"We will provide them with the funds to effectively purchase their own home care under terms where they will have even greater control," he told reporters Wednesday at The Second Mile Club, a seniors' day program in Toronto. "We'll start, obviously, at a smaller scale to allow us the opportunity to make sure we get it right." The minister also announced some other changes to the home-care system, including $5-million for funding 80,000 more hours of at-home nursing care by raising the cap to 150 visits per month from the current limit of 120; developing a "statement of values" for the system; and making it clear which services are available to patients in their homes, no matter where in the province they live. He rehashed some old promises, too, including the extension of 5-per-cent annual increases in funding for home and community care and the phasing in of a $4-an-hour raise for home-care personal support workers, which The Globe and Mail reported has been delayed this year because of problems with the rollout last year.
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Experimenting with self-directed care was one of 16 recommendations for improving home care made in March by a group of experts led by Gail Donner, the former dean of the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Toronto. "It's a positive first step, a really good beginning," Dr. Donner said Wednesday of the minister's 10-point plan. "I'm glad he mentioned this is the first phase because we have still lots of work to do in the transformation." Dr. Donner's report criticized Ontario's publicly funded home care sector as disjointed, opaque and onerous to navigate, making it "a system that fails to meet the needs of clients and families." But the report also acknowledged the breadth and depth of the challenge faced by the 14 local Community Care Access Centres (CCAC) that co-ordinate home care in a province that is moving aggressively to keep patients out of expensive hospital and nursing home beds. Although the Liberals have doubled funding for home and community care since taking office in 2003, the number of patients receiving services through the CCACs has also doubled in that time, with a sharp increase in the number of complex-needs, long-term patients seeking care, the report said.
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Auditor-General Bonnie Lysyk is currently investigating the CCACs, but she told The Globe and Mail Wednesday that her findings will be released in the fall, not this spring as was widely expected. Her audit will be released in two parts - the first will respond directly to a request from opposition members of a legislative committee and the second will be part of her annual report in December. Some groups, including the Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario, have called for the CCACs to be scrapped altogether, but both Dr. Donner and Dr. Hoskins said Wednesday that basic fixes must precede larger reform. "We believe we need to get ... some consistency, transparency and accountability into the system," Dr. Donner said. "Then, do we need to deal with the structure? Yes, we do. Our view was that's not where you start." The provincewide organizations that represents the CCACs welcomed the minister's announcement, as did the health-care arm of the Service Employees International Union , the labour group that advocated for the raise for personal support workers. But Michael Hurley, the president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, which is part of CUPE, slammed the plan as falling woefully short of the needs in the sector.
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"We can't pretend to people that it's possible to downsize the acute-care sector and that they can rely on the community sector without a substantial investment and this doesn't deliver that," he said. "We haven't been given a system - we've been given another announcement of an another experiment."
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Premiers ask federal government to cover 25 per cent of health care costs; Premiers ask... - 0 views

www.fpinfomart.ca/doc/doc_display.php?key=pr|242663|wcpa|20150716|225025177

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Canadian Press Thu Jul 16 2015
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ST. JOHN'S, N.L. - Canada's premiers are asking the federal government for more health care funding, saying an increase would help transform the existing health care system and offset the impact of an aging population. A statement from Premier Paul Davis of Newfoundland and Labrador says the premiers are asking Ottawa to increase the Canada Health Transfer to cover at least 25 per cent of all health-care spending by the provinces and territories. The statement released by Davis's office after Thursday's Council of the Federation meeting in St. John's says that each province and territory faces similar challenges, including increased overall health care costs, a rising need for home and palliative care and support for "informal" caregivers.
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"Premiers discussed the ... growing financial pressures population aging will have on their governments, particularly regarding health care," reads the statement. "These financial pressures reinforce the need for the federal government to increase its funding for health care." An emailed statement from Health Minister Rona Ambrose's office says the Conservatives have transferred the highest amounts in history to the provinces and territories for health care and are on track to reach $40 billion annually by the end of the decade. It says Ottawa will provide $27 billion for health care over the next five years, and health funding was being increased at a higher rate than the provinces were spending it. Outside the meeting, a small demonstration called attention to medicare funding. Debbie Forward, president of the Registered Nurses Union of Newfoundland and Labrador, said the federal government is not paying its fair share for health care. Forward said a report released Thursday by the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions estimates that proposed federal funding changes could drain more than $43 billion from the health system over the next eight years.
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BGH cuts hurt: Unions - Infomart - 0 views

www.fpinfomart.ca/doc/doc_display.php?key=pr|245142|brrt|20150729|225881921

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Brockville Recorder and Times Wed Jul 29 2015
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A provincial funding freeze is leading Brockville General Hospital to cut front-line staffing and endanger patient health, a small group of health care union advocates said Tuesday. The Ontario Health Coalition launched a petition urging the provincial government to stop the recently announced cuts at BGH and improve hospital funding.
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"There's no question that the quality of care is going to be greatly affected by these cuts," Curtis Coates, representing the coalition, told a sparsely attended media event in front of Brockville city hall. "As well, these cuts are putting patients and front-line health care staff at great risk," added Coates, the Canadian Union of Public Employees steward at BGH.
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Hospital management says it will monitor the implementation of the cost reduction measures carefully and could even reverse some of them if that is deemed necessary. The petition, which had already garnered some 50 signatures as of midday Tuesday, says BGH faces "major direct care cuts" to areas such as the intensive care unit, operating room, complex care, palliative care, emergency, the stress test clinic, day surgery, diagnostic imaging, medical/surgical, and the switchboard. It adds the provincial government has "cut hospital funding in real dollar terms for the last eight years."
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The petition calls on the legislature to stop the planned cuts and to "improve overall hospital funding in Ontario with a plan to increase funding at least to the average of other provinces." Local supporters plan to hold a rally in downtown Brockville in coming weeks to circulate the petition on a Saturday morning at the Brockville Farmers'Market, said Mary Jane Froats, the Ontario Nurses' Association's (ONA) bargaining unit president at BGH. Hospital management earlier this month announced its latest cost-cutting measures: A reduction of more than 26 full-time equivalent (FTE) positions, including 9.1 FTE registered nurses, 7.9 FTE registered practical nurses, 6.4 FTE personal support workers and 3.2 FTE support service jobs.
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Anne Clark, ONA's regional vice-president for Eastern Ontario, said the cuts will hurt patient care by creating "severe understaffing." "In my professional nursing opinion, hospitals should never cut at the bedside, should never cut jobs that provide direct care to patients," said Clark. She added the cuts in nursing will result in more than 16,000 person-hours of nursing care gone from BGH, a workload that will be shifted onto remaining nurses. "We are seeing health-care decisions being driven by dollars and not our patients' needs," added Clark. Louis Rodrigues, first vice-president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, cited tragic stories from patients' families left on a patient care hotline created by CUPE.
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"We will not sit by while our acute care hospital system is slowly dismantled and privatized," said Rodrigues. Another speaker, Council of Canadians member Jim Riesberry, placed the ultimate blame for the current "austerity" in the hospital system at the feet of the federal government, blaming both Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Liberal predecessor, Paul Martin, for starving provinces of health care cash. BGH vice-president and chief nursing officer Cathy Cassidy-Gifford rejected one claim made by Rodrigues, who said successive cuts at BGH had led to bed closures. She said the reductions being implemented between now and the end of the year are based on consultations with similar-sized Ontario hospitals in a "benchmark" group. There is also a steering committee in place meant to monitor patient care once those cuts are implemented, said Cassidy- Gifford. "If you see there needs to be changes, there will be revisions based on the situation, ensuring that our patients are first and that our staff are able to work in a safe condition as well," she said.
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Leeds-Grenville MPP Steve Clark, who was away at the Progressive Conservative summer caucus meeting, said in a Twitter message he will gladly present the petition to the legislature. Clark last week sent a letter to Health Minister Dr. Eric Hoskins, saying the minister's failure to act by reviewing hospital funding has led to the most recent BGH cuts. In a statement emailed to The Recorder and Times, a spokesperson for the health minister referred staffing questions to BGH management. "Our government's investments have helped to ensure that there is a stable nursing workforce now and for the future. More than 24,000 more nurses are working in Ontario since our government took office, including more than 3,500 new nurses added in 2013," the statement read. Between 2005 and 2012, the province has added 657 nurses in the region covered by the South East Local Health Integration Network, it added.
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Curits Coates, right, representing the Ontario Health Coalition, speaks at a protest over Brockville General Hospital cuts with Jim Riesberry of the Council of Canadians on Tuesday.
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Harper, the economic meddler. Who knew?; Record sums to provinces for health care, bail... - 0 views

www.fpinfomart.ca/doc/doc_display.php?key=pr|246199|ntgm|20150917|229446679

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The Globe and Mail Thu Sep 17 2015
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kyakabuski@globeandmail.com Canadians should have known when they elected a Conservative government, especially one led by such a notorious small-government crusader as Stephen Harper, that it would mean an implacable withdrawal of the state from the economy. Nine years on, the results are in.
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The Harper government wasted no time after its 2006 election disembowelling the federal state, forcing the provinces and private sector to sink or swim. This wholesale retreat showed up in the 2007 budget, with its record cash transfers to the provinces for health care and a boost to the equalization program, which was such an unexpected bonus for then-Quebec premier Jean Charest that he turned around and awarded Quebec voters a $700million income-tax cut. Mr. Harper, the fiscal taskmaster, stuck to his ideological guns during the Great Recession with a $63-billion stimulus program, supplemented by the $9.1-billion that Ottawa contributed to the bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler. The cuts just kept coming as his government nearly tripled non-stimulus-related infrastructure spending to $5-billion from $1.7-billion annually, with an additional $1-billion a year promised for public transit in the April budget.
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And what can be said of Mr. Harper's contempt for Canadian scientists? Under his rule, federal expenditures on university research have put Canada near the top of the global rankings for publicly funded research and development. The Conservative Leader clearly believes the state has no place in basic research. Why else would his government give the Canadian Institutes of Health Research $1-billion a year, or provide the Canadian Foundation for Innovation with $1.3-billion to support research infrastructure at postsecondary institutions and hospitals?
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Mr. Harper's war on state-funded science includes the $243-million he has promised to fund Canada's participation in the Thirty Meter Telescope project; the extra $45-million awarded this year to the TRIUMF cyclotron particle accelerator; the $105-million committed to enable scientists to collaborate on research through the CANARIE cloud-computing network; and the $15-million promised to the Council of Canadian Academies to conduct "science-based assessments." The GM and Chrysler bailouts set the tone for the Harper government's hard line on corporate welfare. It has been a dry well ever since. Most recently, this unyielding insensitivity toward the pleas of manufacturers has manifested itself in a $300-million loan to Pratt & Whitney Canada to develop jet engines and a $60-million loan to Toyota to upgrade two auto plants in Ontario.
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The Harper Tories have shown their disdain toward the Liberal fetish for picking winners by boosting (after renaming) a smorgasbord of industrial policy slush funds, including the $1-billion Strategic Aerospace and Defence Initiative and the Automotive Innovation Fund. The latter's $250-million annual kitty was increased to $500-million a year for two years in the 2014 budget. The Harper government's clean-tech fund, Sustainable Development Technology Canada, has doled out $740-million so far, with hundreds of millions more still to go out the door. No wonder the Liberals and New Democrats have been calling for the state to re-engage with business to boost Canadian innovation. After all, the Tories abdicated their responsibility in this area by conducting the most comprehensive review of federal support for private-sector research in decades and implementing the main recommendations of a 2011 expert panel's report on the matter. The Scientific Research and Experimental Development Tax Credit, which cost $3.5-billion annually and had been subject to much abuse, was scaled back by about $500million - with most of the savings plowed into direct grants to businesses, just as the experts ordered.
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It's debatable whether any of this largesse has made Canada's economy more competitive or innovative. No amount of state support can compensate for a lack of vision or guts among businesses. It's not for a lack of trying by Ottawa that innovation policies that seem to work elsewhere aren't replicable here. The state can go only so far to substitute for the private sector's listlessness. To wit, firms in the oil patch are reacting to tough times by cutting R&D, which is exactly the opposite of what they should be doing right now. They should know only innovation can save them.
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Now, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is vowing to "invest in Canada" by doubling infrastructure spending, while NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair promises to be a "champion" of manufacturing (subsidies). They have big shoes to fill. Both would be hard-pressed to outdo Mr. Harper, who, if you haven't gleaned by now, has turned out to be as much of a meddler as any Liberal who preceded him.
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Patient care will suffer - unions - Infomart - 0 views

www.fpinfomart.ca/doc/doc_display.php?key=pr|245142|nbng|20150917|229461442

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The North Bay Nugget Thu Sep 17 2015
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Patient care at the North Bay Regional Health Centre will suffer dramatically" as the result of job cuts announced Wednesday, Michael Hurley says. Hurley, president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions/Canadian Union of Public Employees, made the statement Wednesday afternoon after hearing the news 158 full-time equivalent positions are being eliminated. No community in Ontario is suffering hospital cuts to the extent that the North Bay community is suffering them," Hurley said. The Liberals saddled North Bay with an enormously expensive P3 hospital after promising to scrap the deal, and they are cutting the hospital's budget by almost six per cent a year.
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The province must step in immediately with funding to stop the bleeding out of vital patient services." The announcement also involves closing 30 beds. Paul Heinrich, the hospital's chief executive officer, said the effects will be felt throughout the facility. According to the council, the province has frozen hospital funding for the past four years, cutting budgets in real terms by more than 20 per cent. To deal with the significant provincial underfunding, the North Bay hospital has slashed nearly $50 million over the past three years, resulting in cuts to nursing, emergency, cleaning, portering, cataract surgery, psychiatric care and forensic units. For 2015, the hospital received $14 million less in provincial funding than it needed to just to maintain existing services. In 2014, the provincial funding deficit was $18 million. 40 nursing positions were eliminated in 2013 to counter a $14-million deficit," the council stated in a media release.
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Shawn Shank, president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 139 which represents hundreds of front-line hospital staff, said unions expect to be notified within four weeks of the impact to personnel. This announcement has caused more anxiety in the workplace," he said. Now that people have heard that 158 number they are wondering if they are within that 158." According to the council, recently released health data shows an increase in patient readmission rates for North Bay in each year of the provincial funding freeze.
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The re-admission spikes signal that the hospital is pushing patients out of hospital faster and faster and before they are well. Patients are being sent home and then re-admitted, acutely ill and often requiring longer, more costly hospital stays. Many individuals are paying with their health for a community hospital that isn't funded properly," Hurley said. Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli took the government to task in the Ontario Legislature Wednesday afternoon. Fedeli blasted the Liberals in a member's statement for putting the health care of Nipissing residents at even greater risk. Today is an incredibly distressing day in my riding, especially for those people who rely on health services provided at the North Bay Regional Health Centre," he stated.
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Today, a further 158 full-time staff at our hospital learned that their jobs are being cut by this government and more than half of those employees were nurses. This is in addition to the 197 front-line health care workers already cut at this hospital - again the majority of them were nurses. Speaker, that's 350 frontline health care workers that are gone." Fedeli said the Liberals are also closing 30 beds in addition to the 30 they already closed at the fiveyear- old hospital. This is not only devastating to the front-line health care workers, but more so for their patients, who are now rightfully concerned about access to the quality health care they need and deserve," he said.
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The Liberal government has clearly put self-interest ahead of the health care of Northerners. This much I want to make clear, Speaker -we, the people of Nipissing, will not stand for this. We're fed up with the scandals that leave us to pay the price." j.hamilton-mccharles@sunmedia.ca
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NUGGET FILE PHOTO • The elimination of 158 full-time equivalent positions at the North Bay Regional Health Centre brings the total loss of front-line health care workers to 350, Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli stated Wednesday in the provincial legislature.
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Psychotherapy can help fill the gap; We must adopt a more rational approach to the use ... - 0 views

www.fpinfomart.ca/doc/doc_display.php?key=pr|246243|ntgm|20150526|221260916

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The Globe and Mail Tue May 26 2015
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apicard@globeandmail.com This is part of a series about improving research, diagnosis and treatment. When medicare was cobbled together in the 1950s and 1960s, provinces began to offer publicly funded insurance for hospital care and then physician services. But there was an important exception: "Institutions for the mentally disturbed" were not funded. Asylums (as psychiatric hospitals were called at the time) were not part of the health system because the care they offered was not deemed to be curative. Thus, mental health became the orphan of health care. Six decades later, the old-style asylums are gone. The long-term patients were "de-institutionalized" and many now live on the streets. The best psychiatric institutions, such as the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and the Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences, and the psychiatrists that came with them, were integrated into the mainstream hospital system.
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But the false perception that mental illness is an affliction that can't really be treated remains. The combination of stereotype-embracing and structural oddity essentially means that psychologists have been tossed to the curb - or, more precisely, to the private health system. As a result, most Canadians who need psychological care require private insurance or pay out of pocket, and much mentalhealth care is left to general practitioners who, because of the fee-for-service payment system, have an incentive to prescribe pills rather than do psychotherapy. While psychotherapy doesn't have the greatest public image - many people envisage endless Woody Allenesque sessions on a couch where nothing is ever resolved - it is actually just as effective as medication in most cases, particularly for common conditions such as depression and anxiety. The evidence is strong.
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Sadly, the offerings in our health system are driven as much by tradition as they are by evidence. We needn't be prisoners of our outmoded structures. In the fifties and sixties, we created a system to provide care in hospitals and in physicians' offices and it's almost impossible to break that mould and innovate - for example, by putting psychological care on an even footing with psychiatric/medicinal treatment. What we really need to do is provide care where people bring their mental-health problems - in primary care. As most provinces try to transition from a solo, fee-for-service model to multidisciplinary teams, it provides a perfect opportunity to bolster mental-health care by integrating psychologists onto teams. Other countries have done so, notably Britain and Australia, and the early evidence is that it's paying off. The fear, of course, is that providing public funding of psychological care will cost more. Of course it will. Estimates range from $950-million to $2.8-billion a year.
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But the offering of psychological care doesn't have to be an open buffet like other aspects of health care, and some of the hundreds of millions now paid for (not always trained) doctors to provide psychotherapy can be spent more smartly. If done right, the investment should pay off down the road, in lower health costs, disability-insurance payouts and absenteeism. Because the greatest costs of mental illness arise when it is left untreated, and festers. Mental illness is common: 10 per cent to 25 per cent of women and 5 per cent to 12 per cent of men experience a major depression; 4 per cent to 7 per cent of Canadians suffer from anxiety disorder; 7 per cent to 12 per cent experience posttraumatic stress disorder; 10 per cent suffer from phobias; 5 per cent experience panic disorders; 2 per cent to 4 per cent suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder or eating disorders; 1 per cent to 2 per cent suffer from bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. For years, we have been focusing efforts on combatting the stigma, urging Canadians with mental-health disorders to come forward. But the care is not available for those who need it; waits stretch from months to years, and an estimated one in three adults and one in four children don't get care at all.
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Psychotherapy can help fill the gap. There are 8,000 psychologists in Canada. About three-quarters are in private practice, charging $100 to $200 an hour, and roughly one-third work exclusively in the public system, where there is no charge to patients. Canadians spend about $950million on psychological care, most of it covered by private insurance and workers compensation; but a good chunk, about one-third, is paid out of pocket. We have a mixed health-funding model in this country, but when it comes to mental-health care, we don't have the mix right. Too many people are being denied care because they can't afford it, or because their workbased insurance provides paltry benefits for psychological care. As it stands, mental-health care remains an orphan. We can take another big step toward correcting this by adopting a more rational approach to the use and funding of psychological care.
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Patient advocates warn of deteriorating home care; System struggling as hospitals relea... - 0 views

www.fpinfomart.ca/doc/doc_display.php?key=pr|242663|tost|20150311|216158036

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Toronto Star Wed Mar 11 2015
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Ontario's home-care system is struggling as hospitals discharge patients "quicker and sicker" and as funding fails to keep pace with growing demands, a patient advocacy group charges. "Everywhere across Ontario there is consensus that access to home care is poor, that people are left without needed care and are suffering. This violates peoples' expectations of compassion and care," said Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition.
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She made her comments Tuesday following the release of a report from the coalition, titled The Care We Need. It says that per-client funding for home care was $3,396 last year, 3 per cent less than it was in 2002/03. The funding situation is better than it was in 2008/09 when the provincial auditor found that per client funding had dropped to $3,003. But it's still lower than 2002/03, when per client funding was $3,486, according to the report. Home care is being "severely rationed" and patients in need are increasingly forced to pay out-of-pocket for costly private care or do without, it warns.
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The report was two years in the making and includes results of consultations with patients, families, nurses, personal support workers, community service provider agencies and other affected groups. "Across the province, we heard about people discharged from hospitals without any care at all. Or people who are being cut off, even though their care needs have not changed, just because of arbitrary budgets," Mehra said. "We heard about a woman who was left without being fed for two days or more. A film had grown all over her mouth. She was severely dehydrated. This is what inadequate home care can mean," she added.
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The report decries the growing involvement of the private sector in the delivery of home care and calls for a reformed system that uses non-profit community services. It describes the home-care system as poorly co-ordinated, bureaucratic, top heavy and inequitable. It highlights concerns about early hospital discharges, inadequate PSW training and a lack of accountability. NDP health critic France Gelinas said that despite years of promises, the government is failing many Ontarians who need home care. "The government keeps saying they need to act but nothing yet. It's long-overdue to apply the principles of medicare to home care and ensure patients have access to the publicly-delivered care they need to remain in their own homes," she said.
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In a written statement, Health Minister Eric Hoskins said his government is working to improve home and community care with the help of an expert group that recently submitted recommendations. "Our government is committed to ensuring that Ontarians receive the care they need. That is why this year we have increased funding for home and community care $270 million and invested more than $4.3 billion in the community sector," he said.
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Rally draws hundreds; Province called upon to free up money for hospitals - Infomart - 0 views

www.fpinfomart.ca/doc/doc_display.php?key=pr|246243|nbng|20151201|234859143

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North Bay Nugget Tue Dec 1 2015
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The size of your wallet should not determine the quality of health care you receive. That was the message delivered to close to 1,000 protesters calling for the provincial government to free up more money for hospitals in Northern Ontario - particularly the North Bay Regional Health Centre.
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"In North Bay, and across Northern Ontario, we are seeing the most severe cuts," said Linda Silas, president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions. The rally drew supporters from across the province to protest cuts across the province. This year, the North Bay Regional Health Centre announced it is cutting almost 160 positions and closing more than 30 beds in an attempt to stave off a flood of red ink. "Here you are looking at 100 layoffs every year" if the province does not end a freeze on healthcare spending, Silas said.
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Silas was one of a number of speakers who called on the government of Premier Kathleen Wynne to increase spending on health care in the province. North Bay, they said, is particularly hard hit because it is a P3 (public-private partnership) hospital - and because it brought three hospitals - two general and one psychiatric - under one roof. "It is time to raise the alarm," said Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition.
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"This is devastating to the community, so let's raise the alarm." Mehra said people should not make the mistake of "believing that these hospital services are being replaced in so-called community care. You do not replace medical and surgical beds in community care. It's just not community care. It is acute hospital care services that are being cut. "You do not replace emergency room nurses. You do not replace cleaners in community care. Let's not buy into the nonsense that is just window dressing to cuts, cuts and more cuts to local services that are needed by the community." Michael Taylor, one of the organizers of the rally, said the cuts in North Bay are "the worst and deepest". .. that affect departments throughout the whole hospital.
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Jamie Nyman was part of a large contingent from Sudbury to travel to North Bay Monday. "This is a very important issue," he said. "The government is cutting services and patient care is declining." Sudbury, he pointed out, has also seen many cuts.
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"It's leaving us with too much workload," he said. "We are seeing a lot of workload issues because of cuts." Debbie McCrank from Kirkland Lake, the local co-ordinator for the Ontario Nurses Association, said the cuts are "going to impact all the North." She is responsible for the area from Kirkland Lake to North Bay, including Mattawa and West Nipissing.
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The North Bay Regional Health Centre, she said, is "a major treatment centre," but the province's cuts are putting that designation at risk, and putting extra pressure on all hospitals in the North. "It's just having a huge impact," McCrank said of the health funding cuts.
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"It comes down to cheaper care versus quality care," she said. "The province is driven by the budget, not by the concern for quality health care." Another supporter was Mike Labelle, a locked-out employee at Ontario Northland. "I'm here to support all the nurses and everyone on down," he said. "Health care has really deteriorated here, and it's time the government wakes up."
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Labelle said the mass of protesters "is the heart of the hospital." About 100 Ontario Northland employees, he said, turned up for the rally. Canadian Union of Public Employees president Mark Hancock said the province's health care cuts amount to an attack on the local hospital and the community.
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The funding freeze means hundreds of staffand beds across Northern Ontario," he said, pointing to placards waved by hospital workers from Timmins, New Liskeard and Sudbury pointing out the effects of cuts at those facilities. Hancock said health care needs a 5.8 per cent annual increase just to meet rising costs, but the freeze means hospitals are getting zero per cent. In real terms, he said, that works out to a 20 per cent cut over the life of the spending freeze.
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Also speaking was North Bay Mayor Al McDonald, who said the situation at the hospital is a major concern in the city. In addition to proper health care for all members of the community, he said, the jobs being cut at the hospital are good-paying jobs, and "if you want to build the city, you need your hospital to provide the same level of care as they have in southern Ontario." Nearby, Stan Zima was waving a large Canadian flag on a 10-foot flagpole.
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"It's obvious the cuts in Northern Ontario have become excessive, and especially in North Bay," he said. "We are taking big hits in this. Hospital cuts hurt everybody. "Wynne has got to get the message. Northern Ontario is suffering more than any other area." Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli, speaking at Queen's Park, called on the provincial government to address the funding crisis at the North Bay Regional Health Centre.
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Health-care professionals and patients alike in my riding are concerned that the quality of care we're getting in Nipissing is in jeopardy. And it's creating turmoil in the community," Fedeli said, asking the government to restore "proper ongoing funding" to the facility.
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Pj Wilson, The Nugget / Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition, addresses a crowd of close to 1,000 people at Lee Park, Monday. Supporters from across the province were in North Bay to pressure the Kathleen Wynne government into providing more funding for hospitals across the province. • Pj Wilson, The Nugget / Close to 1,000 people called for the provincial government to increase funding to Northern Ontario hospitals and, in particular North Bay Regional Health Centre, at a rally at Lee Park, Monday. Busloads of supporters came from as far as Toronto, Hamilton and Stratford to support North Bay.
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Long-term care operators warn of cuts over new funding model (part 1) - 0 views

www2.canada.com/...story.html

abf Alberta ltc wages privatization

shared by Irene Jansen on 29 Jan 13 - No Cached

Two not-for-profit agencies that together operate more than 1,000 long-term care beds in Alberta say their operations are financially strained and they will need to consider staffing or service reductions unless the government gives them more money.
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T he Shepherd's Ca re Foundation in Edmonton and Calgary-based Bethany Care Society say a new patient-based funding model from Alberta Health Services is insufficient to manage rising expenses.
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AHS pushes ahead with the new funding model, which it says is designed to ensure equality for all long-term care residents, whether their care is provided by a public institution, a not-for-profit agency or a for-profit corporation.
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uses a formula to take into account the needs of each patient, calculate the health resources required, and then allocate a standard funding amount
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The old system was considered more uneven, in that different long-term care operators each received a block of funding based on individual agreements with health authorities.
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CUPE supports call for better funding for Alberta Senior's Lodges - 1 views

cupe.ca/...supports-call-lodge-funding

cupe alberta assisted living

shared by Irene Jansen on 30 Sep 12 - No Cached

The President of the Alberta Division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees is supporting a municipally led call for better provincial funding for Seniors’ Lodges.
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Delegates to the Alberta Urban Municipal Association convention later this month will debate a resolution calling on the Redford government to reverse cuts to Seniors’ Lodges and fund infrastructure and building improvements.
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CUPE Alberta President Marle Roberts says her union, which represents almost 6,000 health care and seniors’ care employees in the province, has seen the impact of underfunding first hand.
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“For the last decade, the Alberta government has been trying to get out of the business of seniors care and pass it off to the private sector,” said Roberts.  “The decision to cap funding for lodges was part of that strategy – let public facilities crumble and push seniors to more and more costly private options.”
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Wait times worrisome - Infomart - 0 views

www.fpinfomart.ca/...171949765

cuts

shared by Doug Allan on 28 Jun 13 - No Cached

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.
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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.
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This week, QHC board member Doug McGregor confirmed the network is struggling to "try and live within the allocated volumes."
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"It's difficult to absorb the (cost) volumes," McGregor said about QHC offsetting the additional cost. He said ongoing funding cuts could "quite possible be a greater problem in coming years."
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Last year, slightly more than 20,000 cataract procedures were completed in Trenton. The current wait time is 136 days, which falls below the provincial average of 142 days. The LHIN target is between 91 and 100 days. The network was funded for 219 hip (reduction of one from previous year) and 481 knee (10 less than previous year) procedures over the past year. Average wait times here, for both those procedures (hips 141 days and knees 138 days) fall below the provincial average.
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"We are anticipating we will receive funding for about the same number of hips and knees as we had in 2012/13, but exact numbers have not been confirmed," QHC spokesperson Susan Rowe.
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Doug Allan on 28 Jun 13

Quinte Cuts -- fights over allocations of surgeries

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">Quinte Cuts -- fights over allocations of surgeries</div>

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Ontario lags provinces in hospital care, funding | Canadian Union of Public Employees - 0 views

cupe.ca/rovinces-hospital-care-funding

cupe ochu ontario hospital cuts

shared by healthcare88 on 25 Oct 16 - No Cached

Oct 20, 2016
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Chances are that if you are a hospital patient anywhere in Canada but Ontario, you are receiving higher levels of care. A recent report by the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU/CUPE) comparing funding, staffing, nursing, and readmissions in Ontario with other provinces, reveals that Ontario’s hospital funding is much lower than funding in the rest of Canada’s hospitals, as much as $4.8 billion lower.
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Battle lines drawn amid health-care overhaul - Infomart - 0 views

www.fpinfomart.ca/doc/doc_display.php?key=pr|242663|tost|20160827|254784460

accord privatization

shared by Heather Farrow on 29 Aug 16 - No Cached

Toronto Star Sat Aug 27 2016
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Preparations are underway for a milestone summit this fall that could be a defining moment for Canadian quality of life in the 21st century. Ottawa appears determined to overhaul Canada's $219-billion health-care industry. It is keen to use the once-in-a-decade expiry of the Health Accord as the opportunity for reform. The Health Accord is the means by which Ottawa injects funds into Medicare with health-care transfers to the provinces and territories, and renegotiation of a new accord has consumed several months.
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At this historic moment, the feds are prepared to be the prime architect of change, if balky provinces and territories put up their usual stubborn resistance to it. Provinces and territories have consistently demanded more money from Ottawa with no strings attached. They denounce specific uses of the funds as a federal intrusion on their bailiwicks. But as Jane Philpott, the federal health minister, said earlier this week, "There has never been a major development in the history of health care in Canada where the federal government was not there." Indeed.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Manitoba budget offers minor funding increases to public services, but social impact bo... - 0 views

cupe.ca/impact-bonds-give-rise-concern

cupe Manitoba funding privatization

shared by Heather Farrow on 02 Jun 16 - No Cached

Jun 1, 2016
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The Pallister Government’s first provincial budget offers minor improvements to many important areas of the public sector, says CUPE Manitoba. “We are pleased to see this government’s continuation of funding to health care, education, post-secondary education, and social services,” says Kelly Moist, president of CUPE Manitoba. “In an environment where cuts would have been the ‘easy way out’, we are pleased that this government listened to Manitobans, and has instead maintained or increased funding to many key public services”.
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NetNewsLedger - Thunder Bay News - Frailty a better gauge for health-care funding - 0 views

www.netnewsledger.com/...tter-gauge-health-care-funding

accord

shared by Heather Farrow on 26 Jul 16 - No Cached

Posted 25 July 2016
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Canada’s per capita health funding formula fails to address the clear and growing need created by our frail population. When the previous Health Accord expired in 2014, the Conservative government unilaterally established a new funding model for federal health transfer payments to the provinces and territories on an equal per capita basis. It included a guarantee that no province would receive less than its 2013 transfer amount, with a further guaranteed minimum three per cent growth rate from 2017 onward. So what’s not to love? Plenty.
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That makes sense. But the health minister should also craft a new federal funding arrangement based on the more precise and evidence-based concept of frailty.
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