In Canada, we pride ourselves on having universal health care.
Every time we hear of someone complain about health care in the United States, we will joke about our feelings being hurt, “But I can go to the doctor for free to get them checked.”
That used to be the case.
Today, we’re lucky if our community has a doctor we can see, or an emergency room at our hospital that is open.
It’s time to face facts: the health-care system in Ontario is broken.
And it is broken by design.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit our area in March 2020, everyone universally praised the efforts of health-care workers as they worked around the clock, wore layer after layer of personal protection equipment – and in some cases lived away from their families – all so they could care for our sick, vulnerable and elderly while making sure they didn’t spread a virus that, at the time, we knew very little about.
But, thanks to the Doug Ford Conservative government introducing Bill 124 in 2019, the best way we could thank these hard workers was to give them a one per cent increase in pay. On a side note, Bill 124 has since been ruled unconstitutional in court and the Ontario government is appealing.
By the end of 2021, inflation was at 5.2 per cent. It was 6.8 per cent in 2022. And earlier this year, was as high at 5.9 per cent.
A one per cent increase doesn’t go very far in fighting that.
Combine a lack of increase in wages to go with a shortage of staff at local hospitals, and you end up with burn out.
And burnt out they were.
Since the summer of 2022, local hospitals announcing emergency department closures due to a lack of staff have become the norm, not the exception.
That isn’t right.
Local long-term care homes, such as the ones operated by Bruce County, have been using agency nurses to fill their shortages. Not surprisingly, these agency nurses come with a higher price tag than a full-time nurse to perform the same tasks.
In Bruce County, $5.2 million was spent last year on direct care agency staffing. It is anticipated that number will be $4.7 million in 2023. There are some savings expected – about $2.1 million – due to not having to pay full-time salaries and benefits.
Other hospitals, such as Listowel, Wingham, Chesley, and Walkerton, have been using nursing externs to fill scheduling gaps in an effort to reduce closures. An outside-the-box idea, yes, but as one nurse told Midwestern Newspapers anonymously, “These young adults are being pressured to keep the hospitals open, as per direction from upper management.”
“Nursing students are amazing, but no nursing student who is not even completed their education nor registered, should be pressured to ‘save the hospital’ and ‘prevent it from closing.’”
Rural Ontario has, for as long as we can remember, been fighting an uphill battle to recruit and retain health-care workers. New doctors want state-of-the-art facilities and will limit how many patients they will see; current doctors are inching closer to retirement and have limited their office hours; and some nurses want to specialize in a given area of care rather than be a nurse-of-all-trades.
And all nurses want to be compensated fairly.
On July 20, it was announced that the Ontario Nurses’ Association won an arbitration ruling against the Ontario Hospital Association, which will see nurses awarded raises amounting to 11 per cent over two years for the average nurse.
The arbitrator, William Kaplan, cited a staffing crisis and high inflation as part of his decision. He also wrote in his ruling that there are more than 9,000 registered nursing vacancies in Ontario hospitals, and compensation is one of the best ways to attract staff.
Also on July 20, the provincial government announced $44 million this year in additional funding for “165 high volume and smaller emergency departments to reduce wait times and provide people with faster and easier access to timely care close to home.”
Coincidence? We think not.
According to the Financial Accountability Office, the Ontario government is sitting on $22.6 billion in excess funds with no transparency on how that money will be used over the next four years.
Fixing the health-care system – and dropping the costly appeal on Bill 124 – is a great place to start.
– M.W.
