More cuts at Sault Area Hospital (updated)

More cuts at Sault Area Hospital (updated)

Michael Hurley says Sault Area Hospital is closing 56 acute and complex continuing care beds.

Speaking to reporters today at Royal Canadian Legion Branch 25, the president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU) said the Sault cuts are part of a broader trend of underfunding Northern Ontario hospitals.

And he wants Sault MPP David Orazietti to push harder for better hospital funding.

Hurley says the 56 local bed cuts were documented by the Ontario Health Coalition.

Asked by SooToday to comment on Hurley's assertion of 56 lost beds, Brandy Sharp Young of Sault Area Hospital neither confirmed nor denied the number.

But she did concede the hospital is cutting costs.

"Like other hospitals, we are undertaking measures to address significant funding challenges and have recently undergone organizational plans to reshape our operations in order to continue to provide quality care," Sharp Young told us.

Hurley and Sharon Richer, OCHU northern vice-president, are currently on a cutback-fighting tour of 25 Northern Ontario communities.

OCHU was created in 1981 as a bargaining council for Canadian Union of Public Employees hospital workers.

It represents 30,000 CUPE hospital, long-term care, ambulance and central laundry workers in 120 bargaining units across the province.

A just-released OCHU report, Pushed Out of Northern Ontario Hospitals, Abandoned at Home, cites other cuts across Northern Ontario:

12,500 hours of annual nursing care and 24 personal support workers at Sault Area Hospital, which staff report is in "code gridlock" most of the time. Paramedics report waiting as much as seven hours for the hospital to be able to accept their patients. In October 2014, such offload delays took up more than 200 hours of paramedic time.
Matthews Memorial Hospital in Richards Landing has closed its laboratory, which has since been privatized.
$5.1 million in cuts at Health Sciences North in Sudbury, affecting day surgery, surgery, obstetrics, mental health services, in-patient psychiatry, oncology and emergency.
5,600 hours of direct patient nursing care at St. Joseph's Complex Continuing Care in Sudbury.
28 geriatric beds and 22,000 hours of direct patient nursing care at Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital in Thunder Bay.
11,000 hours of direct patient nursing care at Thunder Bay Regional Health Services.
$1.3 million in cuts at Lake of the Woods Hospital in Kenora, affecting oncology, dialysis, obstetrics and other departments.
56 staff cuts at North Bay Regional Health Centre, including more than 50,000 hours of nursing care. North Bay's mental health rehabilitation centre is closing, including eight beds.
26 beds (one out of six remaining beds) at Timmins and District Hospital. Outpatient physiotherapy and 40 staff positions are also being cut there.
One in 10 staff at Temiskaming Hospital in New Liskeard have been advised their positions are being eliminated. The operating room there will be closed half the time.

While the provincial government announced earlier this month that 56 smaller Ontario hospitals will share $7 million in additional funding, none of that cash will come to Sault Ste. Marie, Hurley said.

"There's nothing for the Sault. There's nothing for Sudbury. There's nothing for North Bay, Thunder Bay, Kenora or any larger centre."

Considering that the cost of running a hospital is increasing 5.8 percent a year above the rate of inflation, with a zero percent funding increase Hurley argues that the Sault has actually experienced "a dramatic downsizing of staff and services."

"You see that mirrored across all the larger hospitals in Northern Ontario. We would argue that the impact of the funding freeze and the cutbacks actually hit Northern Ontario harshest."

Hurley argues that the provincial cuts have forced a kind of rationing on hospitals, and the elderly are being especially hard-hit.

OCHU has retained legal counsel to ask the Ontario Human RIghts Commission to conduct an inquiry into systemic age-based discrimination in health care delivery, he said.

"Contrary to what Mr. Orazietti wants his constituents to believe, Sault Ste. Marie and Northern Ontario overall are harshly affected by hospital cutbacks, exacerbated by the challenges of geography and by poverty, underemployment and health status," Hurley said.

"We think that as one of only four Liberal MPPs in northern Ontario, Mr. Orazietti should be advocating for increased hospital funding."

Orazietti counters that hospital funding in Ontario under the current Liberal government has increased from $11 billion to $17 billion.

Sault Area Hospital funding has increased by 40 percent since 2003, he said.

In May, Orazietti announced that the province would invest $2.4 million to open 50 additional beds at Cedarwood Lodge.

"Reducing the number of alternative-level-of-care patients who do not require hospital services at Sault Area Hospital has been a key goal which is why some beds are being reduced at SAH and added in the community. the MPP said.

"There are now about 852 long-term care beds in the city. As well, since 2003 funding to community care access centers to support home care has been increased by 88 percent and today there are 540,000 Ontarians receiving home care."

Orazietti points out that all Ontario hospitals were advised in 2012 that the funding model would change but there would be time allowed for adjustment and implementation.

"It was determined that funding should be provided on what is a health-based allocation model that would blend 50 percent global funding with 50 percent based on measured performance indicators and patient volumes for individual hospitals."

Ontario has 24,000 more nurses and 5,600 more doctors now than it did in 2003, Orazietti says.

"That increase means more Sault residents have primary care providers today as opposed to 2003, when estimates for the number of people without a family physician ranged from 7,000 to 15,000.Today, 850 people in Sault Ste. Marie are waiting for a provider on Health Care Connect, the government service created to help people access a doctor."