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Formula changes dismantling hospitals: OHC report

Posted: April 17, 2016

(April 17, 2016)

Author: Valerie Macdonald, Northumberland Today

COBOURG #8211; 

She summarized her reaction by doing this: “We diminished one hospital within our community already using the promise that better services could be provided.

Rally organizer Judy Sherwin of Cobourg, who compensated for 2 ad banners that say “Care not cuts: Put Patients” indicates people don’t appear to understand about the restructuring ongoing at NHH.

Within the April 13 document, which stories hospital cuts and closures from 2012 to 2016, it claims that “Ontario’s hospitals are actually precariously overcrowded and understaffed, yet bed closures, staff lay offs and repair cuts continue.

When NHH was requested to discuss the OHC report after it had been launched Wednesday, representative Jennifer Gillard confirmed that cafeteria hrs happen to be reduced. When requested particularly if reduced global funding reductions are affecting care and services in Ontario hospitals, and to reply to the outcome from the cuts of the amount of people affected at NHH this season, as well as the impact of changes outlined for 2014 and 2011 within the OHC report, Gillard mentioned within an email the very next day on Thursday mid-day there was not time for you to evaluate the report “in full” which NHH is “unable to supply comment at the moment.Inches

“The only surgery and cuts you should be seeing at our hospital ought to be medical, not budgetary,” Mackenzie-Nicholas stated. “We don’t want platitudes – we would like action. It#8217;s not sufficiently good to make cuts and have a financial budget that isn#8217;t balanced. This only informs us that soon we are cut again”

“This overcrowding results in poor patient outcomes, elevated morbidity and mortality, infectious disease outbreaks, elevated chance of medical errors and patient dissatisfaction.”

No comment have been supplied by Sunday morning.

A current report in the Ontario Health Coalition (OHC) states community hospitals, like Northumberland Hillsides Hospital in Cobourg, are now being dismantled because of funding formula changes that “force specialization and centralization of care into less locations with patients made to travel further for services.”

“It is much activity to construct on the hospital services, not cut them. Patient care must always come first. What#8217;s obvious in my experience after studying the Ontario Health Coalition report would be that the provincial government (and federal too- if there#8217;s not really a new Health accord) get their focal points confused.Inches

“I notice that there should be transformation in healthcare however that transformation ought to be for much better healthcare,Inches she ongoing. “The stats provided within this report show our hospitals in smaller sized towns, for example our very own, still have a problem with little support from your MPP.”

Within the hospital-by-hospital chronically of cuts, the OHC reviews the present restructuring going ahead this season at NHH including the cutting of 13.7 full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs in direct patient and support care covering nursing, laboratory, therapy, hospital support, housing keeping, maintenance and clerical employees.

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Additionally, it noted cuts of 26 beds this year, and also the closure of diabetes, outpatient physio therapy and work-related therapy even though it also claims that “as a direct result community fightback, most of the cutters were folded back, not not every were stopped.”

Linda Mackenzie-Nicholas, co-chair from the local Northumberland chapter from the OHC and SEIU education co-ordinator, told Northumberland Today the “report implies that our hospitals have grown to be the scapegoat for the present provincial government’s poor budgeting abilities.

The OHC report claims that before that in 2014, the general public cafeteria hrs were “proposed” to become cut, plus a suggested decrease in ambulatory clinic and operating room hrs.

Meantime, a nearby rally has been organized with this Saturday, April 23 to aid local hospital employees.

vmacdonald@postmedia.com

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