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Ontario Health Coalition asking for minimum standards on hospital ER hours, inpatient beds and other services
Posted: May 15, 2025
(May 14, 2025)
By: Durham Radio News
Amid a growing number of department closures across the province, advocates are asking the province to enforce minimum standards on which services hospitals must offer.
Representatives from the Ontario Health Coalition spoke at Queen’s Park on Wednesday to discuss the staffing shortages.
“We’re calling for a minimum standard that says that you cannot have a hospital with no inpatient beds and no emergency department,” said Executive Director Natalie Mehra. “The minister should set that standard and require that the hospitals find it and have their discussion about what resources are needed to make that happen.”
“A hospital has an emergency department,” she added. “It has a lab. It has inpatient beds. It has continuing care beds. It has at least a palliative care bed so people can die closer to home.”
According to the group, emergency rooms in Ontario had to close their doors more than 1,100 times in 2024. This includes overnight closures, weekend closures and at least one permanent shutdown at a hospital in Minden.
“Now we have hospitals where there’s no [emergency room] after 5 p.m., or it might be 7 p.m. or it might be 8 p.m.,” said Mehra. “Different times in every town. You have to go on websites or Facebook pages and try and find it. It’s ridiculous.”
She also pointed Thessalon and West Grey, where hospitals have reportedly, in recent years, had to close their inpatient units and transfer patients elsewhere.
The coalition has long argued the issue stems from overwork and underfunding, and that health professionals are being lured to private nursing agencies, American hospitals or more urban settings.
