The Premier’s Council on improving health care and ending hallway medicine has released its first report of 2019, providing an overview of the problem of hallway health-care in Ontario.
The goal of this Council is to provide strategic advice to the Premier and Minister of Health that will help to ensure Ontarians have a health-care system with that has the right mix of health-care professionals, and is also informed by stakeholder groups and patients.
The council will begin developing advice for the government on how to fix the problem of hallway health-care. Recommendations will explore opportunities for improvement in digital health-care, integrated health-care delivery, and finding efficiencies in the system.
How did hallway healthcare become such an issue for Ontario though? President of the Ontario Council of Hospitals Union, Michael Hurley explains one of the main reason behind it.
“The whole problem is linked to the fact that Ontario has a fewest number of acute care hospitals of any province in the country, or of any country with a developed economy in the world. After closing eighteen-thousand beds over the last twenty years, you have this problem.”
In the baby boom generation period, the focus was not on developing health-care. Hurley says that focus on health-care and funding for more beds right now, is crucial with the changing demographic of society.
“When the baby boom generation was born, there was a huge investment in building schools and universities in Ontario. Right now, that baby boom generation is aging, and it’s going to require medical care as it ages. There have to be investments to meet that demographic challenge, there just have to be.”
At this point, Hurley believes that the only logical way to solve hallway medicine is pumping more funding into health-care.
“Ontario has to make investments. The Premier has to make investments in health-care, and has to make investments in things like education.”
NDP leader Andrea Horwath argued that Doug Fords’ potential privatization and cuts to health-care is unacceptable.
Doug Ford’s plan to cut public health care and turn it into a cash cow for private corporations is wrong, and I'm not letting it happen without a fight.
Ontarians deserve a govt that invests in front-line health care, to shorten wait times and end hallway medicine. #onpoli https://t.co/vO8dOtArxA— Andrea Horwath (@AndreaHorwath) January 31, 2019
Hurley is in total agreement with Horwath and believes if Premier Ford keeps it up with his cuts to health-care and education, he better be up for a battle.
“All of us are going to be in showdown with this government over their cutbacks to basic services in health, post-secondary, elementary, and secondary schools.”
A government health-care survey found that 41 per cent of people who went to the emergency department could have been treated by their primary care doctor, and just one-third of hospital patients are admitted to an in-patient bed from the ER within the eight-hour target.
The report will be looked at in depth by the Premier’s council and the Premier himself before moving forward with decisions to end hallway medicine.
