Ontario Pushing Patients Out of Hospitals

Posted by Steve Jones

Fri, Apr 25, 2014

A report entitled “Pushed out of Hospital, Abandoned at Home” says that after twenty years of budget cuts, Ontarios health system is failing patients. The Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU) and the Ontario Association of Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists (OSLA) claims that Ontario’s health care system is pushing patients out of hospital prematurely.

The 64 page report http://www.ochu.on.ca/resources/Events/HOTLINE_REPORT_2014.pdf published this week, describes the experiences of real patients and their families from more than 30 Ontario communities who responded to a hotline run by the two union groups.

This similar topic was reviewed here not long ago. http://blog.qualicaretoronto.com/community-care-access-centres-ccac

According to an article written by Gord Young of the Nugget,OCHU president Michael Hurley said One of the things that we wanted to do with this report was to give a voice to these people,

The report points out that the Ontario heath care ststem has 19,000 fewer hospital beds over 20 years. This reduction includes greatly needed continuing care beds and convalescent care beds for near-end-of-life patients.

OSLA’s executive director Mary Cook also said that outpatient services in the community and home are non-existent. Cook claims that most outpatient services have decrease though the Community Care Access Centre sinceOntario Minister of Health Deb Mathews has pushed for changes to a less expensive outpatient community care model.

Among other recommendations, the union sponsored reports recommends more hospital beds and more funds for speech-language pathology services.

At Qualicare, we act as our patient’s advocate, helping each patient to maximize their CCAC and Ontario health care entitlements while also recieving home care in Toronto with our professional nurse managed private home care and hospital care.