A new report released by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) last week is once again highlighting what the union calls “chronic underfunding” of Ontario’s healthcare system.
CUPE representatives have been spending time of late traveling to different cities in Ontario, including Kingston, in order to share these findings and ask for support from the public in trying to improve funding in the province.
The report says instead of focusing on improving existing hospitals, the government has instead looked towards healthcare privatization that has only exacerbated the issues.
While the union has been sounding this alarm for several years, they say cost factors beyond inflation are soon to further compound the problems hospitals are facing.
Doug Allan, the report’s author and senior researcher for CUPE National, says chief among these pressures is the country’s aging population.
He says the Ontario government has not yet prepared for the impact this is going to have on the healthcare system, and especially hospitals.
“About 61% of hospital inpatient beds are occupied by people 65 and older, that group is growing at a very rapid pace and especially the older part of the over 65 group,” Allan said.
“Just as we developed schools, colleges and universities in the 50s, 60s and 70s to deal with the baby boomer bulge that happened then and also with the growing need for universities… it is something we have to do at this stage to deal with that, with the baby boomers.
Allan pointed to other factors like more young people developing more chronic illnesses, rising costs of drugs, and private nursing agencies as cost pressures faced by hospitals, and says that the Ontario Hospital Association (OHA) estimates that between these factors and inflation, there has been a 6% rise in costs on a year to year basis that is unavoidable for hospitals to maintain standards of care.
While 6% is what CUPE seeks as a funding increase, the expectation is that the Ontario government will be providing an increase of 3.3% instead.
While he says these costs would be near impossible to mitigate, the Ontario government is looking at cutbacks as the answer instead of more funding.
“We think it is a reasonable estimate that the OHA makes of around 6% actual cost pressures that cannot be that easily mitigated,” Allan said.
“In order to implement its austerity measures, the government required hospitals to develop hospital sector stabilization plans… There are significant cuts. The government is really breaking with that hard fought consensus of dealing with these cost pressures and trying to improve the hospital system. The result is that we are having more problems in the hospitals.”
He says due to these factors, deficits at hospitals have “exploded” over the last few years, forcing cuts to be made that impact the level of care.
The report states that in 2020 hospitals had a combined $2 billion in working capital, while just over 5 years later that number sits at negative $280 million, leaving hospitals to borrow public funds or risk not being able to pay for day to day bills.
The Ontario Health Ministry, for its part, has touted record levels of investment into the province’s healthcare system, but Allan says it still isn’t meeting the funding levels needed to deal with the worsening crisis, and that Ontario is falling behind even compared to other provincial healthcare systems who have struggles of their own.
“Ontario is a special case. We’re the exception to the exception, we’re the outlier of the outlier,” Allan said.
“Before 2005, Ontario hospitals were funded and presumably staffed at levels that were comparable to the rest of Canada. But that gap has just grown and grown and grown.”
Kingston’s hospitals, for example, experienced a 101% percent capacity throughout the year, which Allan says is startling but not record setting by any means.
At the start of the month, MPP for Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston John Jordan announced that the Ontario government is investing $18,776,600 million to support improved operations and reduced wait times at hospitals in Smiths Falls, Perth, Carleton Place, Almonte and Kingston.
This is investment is part of a $1.1 billion investment in Ontario’s hospital care which, while welcome, CUPE says still leaves Ontario nearly $4 billion short in comparison to funding rates seen in other provinces.
