[W. K. Lis]

Now Doug Ford has to play catch-up and more...

List of the Ford government health care cuts to November 20, 2019:

From link.

• Cut OHIP+ so families with sick children will have to seek private coverage first and pay deductibles and co-payments (June 2018).
• Cut planned mental health funding by more than $330 million per year (July 2018).
• Cancelled all new planned overdose prevention sites. (Autumn 2018). Cut funding for six overdose prevention sites (April 2019).
• Cut funding to the College of Midwives of Ontario. (December 2018).
• Cut funding for the dementia strategy.
• Cut and restructured autism funding, in addition closed waitlists (Winter 2018/19). There were major problems rolling out the current autism plan with the capped funding levels per family. The newest plan, an expected return to a needs-based program, will not be rolled out until April 2020. In October, an expert panel recommended extensive changes to the government’s autism strategy. Families are reporting they are still waiting for funding to flow (October 2019).
• Set overall health funding at less than the rate of inflation and population growth, let alone aging. This means service levels cannot keep up with population need (2019 Budget).
• Set public hospital funding at less than the rate of inflation. This means real dollar (inflation adjusted dollar) funding cuts and serious service cuts (2019 Budget).
• Cut funding from long-term care. Funding for long-term care daily care set at 1% which is approximately half the rate of inflation and equals real dollar cuts (2019 Budget).
• Introduced Bill 74, which gives sweeping new powers to the minster and Super Agency to force restructuring of virtually the entire health system (February/March 2019).
• Municipalities revealed Ford government plan to cut and restructure paramedic ambulance services, down from 59 to 10 (April 2019). Set 2019 land ambulance grant funding at less than the rate of inflation. This means real dollar cuts to paramedic ambulance services. The City of Toronto has calculated the value of these cuts to amount to $4 million for Toronto alone (April 2019). Under pressure, changed course. Proposed to increase paramedic service funding by 4% but still move forward with closures of local paramedic ambulance services from 59 down to 10 (August 2019).
• Cut OHIP funding for residents travelling out of Canada (May 2019).
• Leaked document revealed plans to cut half a billion dollars in OHIP services. On the chopping block: sedation for colonoscopies, chronic pain management services and others. Plans were supposed to be made public this services from OHIP including physical assessments for surgery, ear wax removals, and physician referrals (August 2019).
• Cut 44 positions at the Ontario Telemedicine Network (OTN) –provider of video medical services — which previously employed 265 people. In other words, 1 in every 6 telemedicine staff positions are slated to be cut. The official dollar figure has not yet been released, but, OTN received $42 million in provincial funding 2017-18, nearly all came from the Ministry of Health (May 2019).
• Plans to reduce the number of Public Health Units from 35 to 10. Cut 27%, or $200 million per year, of provincial funding for public health. Toronto Public Health has been particularly hard-hit. The city of Toronto has calculated the cuts will amount to $1 billion over a 5-year period. The Ford government disputes these figures (April 2019). Under pressure from municipalities, the Ford government backtracked and reduced the amount of their cuts but still plan significant cuts (August 2019). In late May the government announced it will delay these cuts by one year but still plans to move forward with them next year.
• Cut more than $70 million from eHealth’s budget (May 2019).
• Cut almost $53 million from the Health System Research Fund, a fund dedicated to research relevant to provincial policy and health-care system restructuring (May 2019).
• Cut $5 million in annual funding for stem-cell research at the Ontario Institute for Regenerative Medicine (May 2019).
• Cut $22 million from cancer screening programs (May 2019).
• Cut $24 million in funding for artificial intelligence research from the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence as well as the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (May 2019).
• Cut $1 million in funding to Leave the Pack Behind, a free program designed to help young adults quit smoking (May 2019).
• Eliminated more than 800 full-time equivalent positions in the LHINs (Local Health Integration Networks) and in the six health care agencies (including Cancer Care Ontario, Health Quality Ontario, Trillium Gift of Life, Health ForceOntario and others) that were closed and merged into the new “Super Agency” (June 2019).
• Cut 291 staff at autism centre for children, ErinoakKids Centre for Treatment and Development (June 2019).
• Cut all Nurse Practitioner services and 15% of nursing positions at Haldimand-Norfolk Health Unit resulting in cuts to nurses providing school health programs, community health, infectious diseases, sexual health and vaccine-preventable diseases (June 2019).
• Eliminated 170 Cancer Care Ontario FTE positions. Many of the positions eliminated were directly responsible for measuring and comparing quality in cancer care (June 2019).
• Cancelled the Quality Management Partnership (QMP) that ensured quality and consistency in cancer care. The QMP program was started in response to women undergoing unnecessary mastectomies for mistaken diagnoses of breast cancer. QMP developed quality standards for cancer screening and quality improvement for pathologists (June 2019).
• Cut and cancelled two long-term care home funds that amount to a $34 million dollar cut to long-term care home programs, services, equipment and facility maintenance (June 2019). Postponed these cuts until October 1st to offer facilities time for adjustment (August 2019). Postponed these cuts until 2020 (September 2019).
• Raised long-term care resident co-payment fees by 2.3%, meaning older adults would have to pay $500 more per year (August 2019).
• Eliminated forensic pathology services in Hamilton (July 2019).
• Cut $634,689 used to run the Mobile Cancer Screening Coach that screened for breast cervical and colorectal cancers in Hamilton, Burlington and Niagara. The bus will go off the road in April 2020 (July 2019).
• Cut 9 child development staff at KidsAbility Child Development Centre locations in Fergus, Guelph, Cambridge, Kitchener and Waterloo (March 2019). Will eliminate another 20 – 25 FTE staff in January 2020 due to cuts to autism services.
• As a result of provincial funding cuts to Public Health, the Windsor-Essex County Public Health Unit issued layoff notices to nine registered nurses (RNs) from the Healthy Families and school programs (November 2019).

List of Hospital Cuts, Privatization, Mergers & Closures to November 20, 2019

• Cut more than 120 full-time equivalent staff including nurses, health professionals and patient support staff from Sudbury’s Health Sciences North. After protests by the public and the Health Coalition some of the cuts were rolled back but significant cuts continued nonetheless (November 2018). Plan to cut 22 hospital beds and 176 positions from Sudbury Health Sciences North over a five-year span (July 2019).
• Privatized lab service, transcription, and patient transportation; outsourced microbiology testing at South Bruce Grey Health Centre. Cut acute care hospital beds up to 40% across all sites. Downgraded acute beds to reactivation beds at a lower staffing level, centralized them to Chesley Site and renamed them “Seniors Centre of Care” (January 2019).
• Cut 46 RN positions from Grand River Hospital in Kitchener – Waterloo (July 2019). This amounts to more than 80,000 hours of registered nursing care hours cut this year.
• Cut 80 staff from Windsor Regional Hospital (WRH) mostly in housekeeping and food services departments (April 2019).
• Privatized outpatient lab services to private for-profit LifeLabs laboratories at two North Wellington Health Care hospitals – Louise Marshall Hospital and Palmerston and District Hospitals (April 2019).
• Privatized routine outpatient blood tests and lab tests at St. Michael’s hospital to for-profit laboratories (April 2019).
• Cut the pediatric ABC Clinic at Michael Garron Hospital (May 2019).
• Cut 14 full-time registered nurses, which equals a cut of over 25,000 hours of patient care, at Orillia Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital (May 2019).
• Cut at least 50 clerical staff at St. Michael’s Hospital, St. Joseph’s and Providence Health Centre in Toronto (May 2019).
• Cut 165 full-time equivalent staff positions from London Health Sciences Centre (June 2019).
• Cut 60 positions from Addiction and Mental Health Services – Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington (AMHS-KLFS) (June 2019).
• Closed the Maternal Fetal Medicine Clinic at Windsor Regional Hospital (June 2019).
• Privatized outpatient lab services at Clinton Public Hospital, Seaforth Community Hospital St. Marys Memorial Hospital (June 2019).

 

[old boy]

Now Doug Ford has to play catch-up and more...

List of the Ford government health care cuts to November 20, 2019:

From link.



List of Hospital Cuts, Privatization, Mergers & Closures to November 20, 2019

And remember that the largesse being shown now will be paid for at some point, and maybe in spades. Once we're past the crisis, watch for service cuts and a further decline in the quality of service as the faux Doug resumes his tax fighter stance. Here's hoping he will remember some of the heady days when it sounded so right to say we're all just folks in this together.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Ontario suspends Environmental Bill of Rights citing COVID-19

From link.

The Ontario government recently announced it will suspend public oversight and transparency in environmental decision-making during the COVID-19 emergency. This change allows the government to push forward projects or laws that could significantly damage the environment without consulting or notifying the public. While we want and expect our elected officials to do what is required to address this crisis and stop the spread of the virus, it must not be at the expense of regulations that protect water, land, wildlife and clean air.

You can read the official suspension notice here, read an article from the National Observer here and read a response from lawyers at the Canadian Environmental Law Association here.

 

[WislaHD]

Well, I guess it was too much to expect Douggie to not take advantage of a crisis for a blatant powergrabbing move.

 

[old boy]

Ontario suspends Environmental Bill of Rights citing COVID-19

From link.

And so predictable....following the U.S. playbook turning a crisis to your advantage.

 

[jje1000]

Interesting- surprised to see Ford's ratings that high.

A good example is Ontario Premier Doug Ford. At the end of last year, several polls showed Premier Ford’s approval level cratering in the 20s. Today it is at 83 per cent.

Leading the pack is Quebec’s Premier François Legault, who registered 96 per cent approval. In over 30 years of political polling, I have never seen a political leader get an approval rating of 96 per cent.

Appearances can be deceiving, though.

These approval levels are based more on hope than on accomplishment. This will start to reverse as we begin to come out of the crisis. That’s because we look to our leaders to keep their word and deliver on what they commit to. Maybe not on every specific promise they make during an election campaign, but when political leaders say they have our back in a crisis, they had better be there when we turn around. If they aren’t, that’s when opposition and criticism will kick in again.

At some point, an opposition agenda based on what didn’t happen during the crisis will materialize. That’s when we will move out of dream politics and return to a politics that’s more familiar to us.

That being said:

This Ipsos poll on behalf of Global News was an online survey of 1,006 Canadians conducted between April 3 and 7. The results were weighted to better reflect the composition of the adult Canadian population, according to census data. The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll is considered accurate to within plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

COMMENTARY: Approval ratings soar for Trudeau and premiers, but can that last? - National | Globalnews.ca

The coronavirus crisis has led Canadians to suspend partisan politics, at least for the moment. Yet pollster Darrell Bricker doesn't expect this 'dream politics' to last.

globalnews.ca

 

[lenaitch]

It will be interesting to watch as things return to more normal. Remember that Churchill has been remembered as an unremarkable MP before WWII and, as PM, polled around 83% in May 1945. Three months later he lost the general election. Please note that I am not, not, not comparing Ford to Churchill - just the point that some politicians perform better in calm than crisis, and other in crisis than calm.

 

[Videodrome]

I was going to mention Churchill, mainly because I just finished watching The Crown. He led the UK through a world war and then lost in a landslide.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Activists fear for safety of people with disabilities after funding for mobility and medical devices deemed non-essential

From link.

Thousands of Ontarians with disabilities may end up in hospital — or not be able to return to the community safely — because the Ford government has temporarily shuttered a provincial program that helps pay the cost of specialized mobility and medical devices, disability activists say.

The Assistive Devices Program (ADP), which provides 75 per cent of the cost of critical equipment such as power wheelchairs, portable oxygen, prostheses and insulin pumps, was declared a non-essential workplace March 24 due to the COVID-19 crisis.

And yet equipment vendors, who continue to receive government funding, have been deemed essential and are still open, causing confusion among people with disabilities who struggle to pay for equipment without ADP approvals.

The situation highlights the urgency to “to modernize the ADP system and to move to more digital solutions to support eligibility reviews and funding approvals,” said Christine Brenchley, executive director of the Ontario Society of Occupational Therapists.

“It is unclear why some elements of application review processes cannot proceed with safe practices of social distancing as in other areas of essential service,” she wrote in a letter to ministry officials March 27, in which she raised concerns about the government’s decision to close ADP.

Barrie-area mother Heather Morgan, a disability activist who has a rare neuromuscular condition, said she has also been raising the alarm with ministry officials and her local MPP.

“Many people with disabilities in the community rely on specialized equipment to remain in their homes safely while they self-isolate,” said Morgan, whose 16-year-old daughter, Ten, has an acute form of the condition that makes it difficult for her to even sit up and has been bedridden for the last year.

After months of waiting, an error in Ten’s application for a motorized wheelchair was sorted out last month, just as the ADP program was closed, Morgan said.

“My daughter has already missed a year of school because of this, and now we don’t know when the funding will come through,” she said.

“But this isn’t just about my family,” Morgan said. “I have heard from someone who is taping their prosthetic leg together because they cannot get it fixed and can’t function without it. I have heard from someone whose elderly relative needs a rollator (a type of walker that helps prevent falls) and can’t access one but lives alone. On and on the stories go.”

A spokesperson for Health Minister Christine Elliott said the government is aware of the uncertainty around the ADP program.

“We’re currently evaluating options to provide greater continuity of services under the Assisted Devices Program during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Hayley Chazan said in an email.


In 2017-18, the health ministry spent about $514 million to provide mobility and medical devices for more than 400,000 Ontario residents, an increase of about 48 per cent in the last 10 years, according to a 2018 provincial auditor’s report. More than 8,000 devices are covered under the program.

Since the program closed, the ministry has continued to fund equipment vendors based on an average of their monthly billings for the past six months. But some vendors are reluctant to offer equipment without ADP funding approval, Morgan said.

Others have said they will provide equipment if clients pay the 25 per cent co-payment. But for her daughter’s motorized wheelchair, that amounts to $10,000, she said.

Many people rely on insurance to cover co-payments. But insurers won’t cover the cost without an ADP approval, she said. “So it is a Catch-22 situation.”

In her letter to the ministry, Brenchley expressed grave concerns about the province’s decision to close ADP services during the pandemic.

She said many hospital patients are unable to return home or move to long-term care without access to appropriate seating and mobility systems.

Closing ADP will delay timely discharges that are critical as hospitals prepare for a surge in COVID-19 patients, warned Brenchley, whose society represents the province’s 4,300 registered occupational therapists.

Those living in the community who need mobility equipment repairs, upgrades or new equipment will be put at increased risk of falls, pressure injuries and other loss of independence if they can’t access ADP financial support, she said in the letter.


Some people will end up in emergency departments and put increased demands on home care during a time when the health-care system is already struggling to fight the pandemic, she noted.

ADP is already experiencing a three-to-seven-month backlog, Brenchley said, adding the situation will only worsen if the program remains shuttered during the health crisis.

In an email Thursday, Brenchley said the ministry has been working to ensure “expedited” funding approval for patients being discharged from hospital who need seating and mobility equipment.

“While not perfect, the ministry has addressed a workaround for essential services,” she said. “At this time we’re monitoring impacts.”

Double amputee Aristotle Domingo, founder of the Amputee Coalition of Toronto, is not aware of any local members who were awaiting ADP funding approval when the office closed last month.

“What I can share, however, is the level of anxiety that we feel while we wait for an approval from ADP even on a regular day,” he said this week. “In the amputee community, getting approval for a prosthesis or wheelchair is a game changer.”


Without funding support, mobility is severely limited, resulting in “less than ideal healthy outcomes both physically and mentally,” he added.

 

[Northern Light]

Activists fear for safety of people with disabilities after funding for mobility and medical devices deemed non-essential

From link.

Phenomenally short-sighted, stupid policy!

This will result in more people staying in hospitals because they can't be safely released without the supporting equipment.

 

[Towered]

I was going to mention Churchill, mainly because I just finished watching The Crown. He led the UK through a world war and then lost in a landslide.

Truly bizarre - what are the reasons given for this?

 

[PinkLucy]

He was a good crisis manager.

 

[zang]

Truly bizarre - what are the reasons given for this?

From http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/election_01.shtml

… The conduct of the war, however, was his overriding passion, and military victory was by far the most important of his goals - thus everything else, including party politics, was secondary. As a result, when the war came to an end and party politics resumed, Churchill suddenly found himself without a clear sense of purpose or direction.

 

[Northern Light]

Maybe I'm just in a grumpy mood.....................but when I saw this on Twitter:

I felt the need to post this:

 

[Towered]

Maybe I'm just in a grumpy mood.....................but when I saw this on Twitter:

View attachment 240793

I felt the need to post this:

View attachment 240795

Precisely - talk is cheap. We've been getting a lot of emails from the big wigs in corporate (who suddenly remember that their employees exist) at work lately, profusely thanking us for our sustained efforts and sacrifices as part of an "essential service."

Give us a tangible reward for the higher risks that we are incurring in the form of increased pay rather than empty emails.

Put your money where your mouth is.