“By the looks of it we know where we can send the overflow patients now for MRIs and CAT scans and everything else.” That Doug Ford, boy, he can come up with some doozies, eh? The Ontario Premier uttered those words earlier this month at the opening of a new veterinary facility near Toronto. Minutes after the words were uttered, as aides struggled to remove Ford’s foot from his mouth (figuratively speaking), howls of protest could be heard about the “callous” remarks.
Obviously, there is nothing humorous about the health system in general and wait times in particular.
The government touts its investments in health care. The province is spending $50 billion over the next ten years on more than 50 hospital projects; it has financed dozens of new MRI machines and CT scanners.
Yet, some people are waiting almost five months for certain tests. At the Cornwall Community Hospital (CCH) for instance, according to Ontario Health figures for June, a patient classified as “priority 4” waited an average of 142 days to get a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) appointment.
Thankfully, emergency cases, priority 1, go to the front of the queue and are seen immediately. Cases deemed non-urgent are priority levels 2, 3 and 4, with 4 being considered the least urgent.
The provincial average wait times for an MRI for priority 4, 3 and 2 cases are 92 days, 27 days and three days respectively. In Cornwall, the average wait times for 3 and 2 levels are 10 and 16 days. At the Ottawa General, wait times for 4, 3 and 2 levels are 101 days, 35 days and four days. The Hawkesbury and District General Hospital processes patients faster than other area institutions. Its wait times are 29 and six days for priority 4 and 3, and only one day for priority 2.
Patients can get a computerized tomography (CT) scan quicker than an MRI. Priority 2 cases are all seen within one day at area hospitals. The Ontario averages are 82 and 32 days for priority levels 4 and 3. At the CCH, wait times for a CT scan are 13 and 6 days; in Hawkesbury, the average wait times are 38 and six; in Winchester, the averages are 62 and nine days.
Meanwhile, “The Premier promised in the last election to end hallway medicine. Today 1,400 patients are on stretchers in hallways,” states Michael Hurley, president of CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU-CUPE). Hurley said hospital capacity is strained by the staffing crisis that could get much worse with a looming shortage of 70,700 nurses and personal support workers by 2027 based on a leaked government document.
Ontario’s staffing crisis is harming workers’ well-being and compromising patient care, according to a new study, Running on Empty, published in New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy.
“Health care workers are warning us about the future of our public system,” said study co-author Dr. Margaret Keith. “They expressed a profound sense of dissatisfaction, despair, sorrow, anger, and frustration about their working conditions and the quality of patient care. There was an overarching sense of being unsupported, overworked, and disrespected, which is being driven by chronic underfunding and understaffing.”
A hospital worker is quoted as lamenting, “I loved going to work when I first started. Now I dread it.”
An operating room nurse told the researchers: “We see individuals who have been sitting in their beds for a day or two, sometimes three or four, because the operating rooms get so clogged. And when that individual gets to us they’re so filthy, they reek of their own feces. The beds haven’t been changed or the individual has not been properly turned and positioned. They’re getting pressure ulcers, which a patient should never get in the hospital.”
Health care workers are feeling the strain of understaffing, the report warns. Study co-author Dr. James Brophy commented: “The sharp decline in their working conditions is harming their mental and physical well-being. But what is particularly jarring is the feeling of being abandoned by the government and often their own employers. It’s like your house is on fire, and everyone can see it, but no one’s coming to help. It makes you lose faith in the system.”
And yet, the Premier insists that everything is tickety-boo.
In a speech to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, Ford gushed that people are moving to the province “where people and families can live, thrive, and prosper.”
Ontario is growing faster than it ever has before. “Some reports suggest that our population growth could be as high as 800,000. That’s like adding a city the size of Mississauga in a single year. In a word, this kind of growth is explosive,” the Premier declared.
“People from across Canada, from around the world, are moving to Ontario…eager to be part of the thriving communities we’re building…excited about the Ontario dream,” Ford stated.
The union charges that the government has its priorities wrong since, although the finance minister finances are in excellent shape, funding for hospitals is not enough to maintain existing service levels, let alone improve the quality of care.
Understandably, Ford and his critics paint dramatically different pictures of the state of Ontario.
Yet, regardless of what side you pick, you must be worried about how Ontario is going to serve 800,000 more people seeking to live the “Ontario dream.”
