(April 20th, 2023)<\/p>\n
By: Tyler Kyla, Chatham Daily News<\/p>\n
A provincial health care watchdog group is asking people to vote on whether they\u2019re in favour of a provincial plan to expand the private delivery of public health care. The goal is to get one million participants, said Shirley Roebuck with the Ontario Health Coalition\u2019s Sarnia-Lambton and Chatham-Kent chapters.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we do not believe that any political party in their right mind will be able to ignore one million votes,\u201d she said. Voting stations are being set up in various stores and select workplaces May 26 and 27, and online voting starts May 2, Roebuck said. Details about voting locations are expected at publichospitalvote. ca by April 28, she said.<\/p>\n
The government announced in January it would be funding clinics to perform more cataract surgeries, MRI and CT scans, colonoscopies, hip and knee replacements and other procedures. Worries are that could spell the end of the existing cataract clinic at Charlotte Eleanor Englehart Hospital in Petrolia, Roebuck said. For-profit clinics for cataracts have been announced for Ottawa, Kitchener and Windsor. \u201cObviously the government is not going to pay for two programs,\u201d Roebuck said, adding she\u2019s also worried subsequent clinics will be built in larger centres where the market is better, and rural and community hospitals will suffer. \u201cIf (Premier Doug Ford is) going to move these surgical programs, he\u2019s not going to give hospitals the same funding he did last year,\u201d she claimed, adding that would mean a reduction in services.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou will lose doctors to these clinics because they want to operate,\u201d she said. There are no plans to reduce the 1,300 cataract surgeries a year currently done at the Pat Mailloux eye centre in Petrolia, said Bluewater Health chief of staff Michel Haddad. The government has said the expansion of for-profit clinics, where OHIP still pays for patients, is to help ease pressure on the hospital system. But wait lists aren\u2019t a problem for cataract surgeries in Petrolia, Haddad said, where 90 per cent are seen within three months. \u201cWe have one of the shortest wait times,\u201d he said, noting there are talks about ramping up the number of surgeries to 1,600 a year. The clinic opened in 2009, and two doctors operate there two days a week, officials said. Similarly with hip and knee procedures, Bluewater Health did more last year than ever \u2013 1,000 \u2013 and has requested that be its new base for funding for the procedures each year, up from 650, Haddad said. The issue, he said, is the lack of people available to work in existing programs in Ontario. It\u2019s unknown what the effect of expanding for-profit clinics will have on that staffing supply, he said.<\/p>\n
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But generally Bluewater Health, which oversees hospitals in Petrolia and Sarnia, is doing its best to expand services locally, he said. \u201cThere\u2019s no plans to scale anything down, regardless of what\u2019s happening with the government or privately funded clinics.\u201d As for what happens with the referendum results, Roebuck said there are plans to have them counted and at Queen\u2019s Park by May 30, nothing the health coalition is \u201cnot going to insist people vote one way or the other.\u201d<\/p>\n
Roebuck has warned expanding for-profit clinics will leech staffing from the public system and diminish public health care, and called instead for Ontario to boost health care spending per capita, which lags per-capita spending in other provinces. It\u2019s not expected the expansion of for-profit clinics will have any impact on a $41-million Chatham-Kent Health Alliance request to expand the Wallaceburg Hospital, she said. \u201cI think they will proceed with that \u2026 but it\u2019s not going to help if we don\u2019t have a strong, viable hospital in Chatham,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n