Struggling With Bed, Staff Shortages Now, Stability of Toronto Hospitals Threatened by PC Under-Funding Scheme for Next Decade: CUPE Report Released Monday Shows

TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Leap 10 years into the future – post the COVID-19 pandemic crisis – to find hospitals in steady decline as years of PC government budget cuts carve billions of dollars from their budgets. This is a future in which patients get even less bedside care and are at much higher risk of hallway medicine, understaffing, readmissions, hospital acquired infections and medical errors, problems that already bedevil Ontario hospitals.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the longstanding capacity issues in Ontario’s hospital system created by successive provincial governments’ underfunding hospital care and cutting 20,000 beds. But under the PC’s health funding plan laid out in its March budget, things are going to get much worse, says a Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) research paper, Ontario Hospital Crisis: Overcapacity and Under Threat that will be released on Monday, April 26 at 11 a.m. (http://bit.ly/OCHU210426).

The research report also projects staff and funding cuts for two of Toronto’s large hospital systems – the University Health Network and the St. Michael’s and St. Joseph’s sites of Unity Health Toronto, as examples of the depth of the cuts that are projected.

“As these ongoing cuts take hold, year after year for the next decade, Ontario’s hospitals will stagger as an aging and growing population pits far too many very sick patients against its weakening capacity, says Michael Hurley president of CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions. “Patients will be at risk. There will be no surge capacity. This government has learned nothing from the COVID pandemic.”

The Ontario 2021 Budget plans to cut COVID health care funds by $3.25 billion. But, even that will be dwarfed by the cuts that will be required if the government’s funding plans are implemented from 2021-2030, according to the report that uses the government’s own data to extrapolate the projections.

Hurley will be joined at Monday’s media conference by CUPE Researcher, Doug Allan.

lf/cope 491

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210423005368/en/

For more information please contact:
Stella Yeadon CUPE Communications 416-559-9300 [email protected]

Source: Canadian Union of Public Employees

You May Also Be Interested In

• Samuel Rodgers Health Center embracing safe seated mammography powered by Enable Me; U.S. trend toward seated exams benefits patients and technologists
• iCoreConnect Inc. Announces New State Endorsement of Seven Solutions From the Tennessee Dental Association
• Houston Will Host 2025 ACHE Congress Bringing More than 5,000 Healthcare Leaders to City