Tomorrow, hundreds of health care workers will converge at the London constituency office of Ontario health minister Deb Matthews and call on her to stop the endless reforms to health care services resulting in bed and staffing cuts, not enough ambulances and tens of thousands of people waiting for home care and long-term care.
“Hard-working health care workers care deeply about the work they do. They will not sit on the sidelines as the Liberals introduce one bad policy after another. Care quality and access is being hurt,” says Candace Rennick the secretary-treasurer of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) who will be meeting with minister Matthews tomorrow at 12:15 p.m. as health care workers rally outside the minister’s office at 242 Piccadilly Street, London.
As part of extensive Liberal health care reforms more and more services would be moved out of acute care hospitals and long-term care facilities into the lower cost community and home care setting. This despite the fact that there are nearly 10,000 people waiting home care supports and over 25,000 on wait lists for a long-term care bed in communities across the province. Across Canada only PEI and New Brunswick spend less per long-term care a day than Ontario.
Ontario already spends $330 less per person than any other province on hospital care. Ontario has the fewest number of beds of any country with a developed economy in the Western world. Ontario is on a par with Haiti in terms of beds to population. Ontario has the fewest staff to patient ratio and the shortest lengths of stay than other Canadian provinces.