THUNDER BAY – The approach the provincial Liberal government is taking to health-care funding is “irresponsible,” alleges the leader of the Ontario New Democrats.
NDP Leader Andrea Horwath continued her Northwestern Ontario tour Monday, meeting with Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre president and chief executive officer Jean Bartkowiak.
Across Ontario there are thousands of people waiting for long-term care beds and others are forced to wait more than 200 days for home care, she said.
“I would say it’s irresponsible. I think we have a health-care system people are seeing as less and less meeting their needs and less and less accessible to folks when they need it, where they need it and when they need it,” Horwath said.
“We’re going in the opposite direction of where we should be going in this province.”
Horwath arrived in the city last week and spent the weekend touring the Dryden and Kenora region, where she met with a number of different health-care stakeholders.
She acknowledged the vast geography of the region makes it more difficult for facilities to provide the expected level of care.
“Throughout the Northwest, if there’s an added pressure it’s the pressure of remote communities and the necessity of providing good health care to folks when they need it coming off reserve or even urban Aboriginal populations have different needs and ways of engaging with the health-care system,” she said.
“That’s an added pressure here, one that’s not being I don’t think adequately addressed at least not in a way health-care providers themselves feel good about and that’s worrisome. When folks are telling me they’re concerned about the quality of care they’re able to provide their patients we know there’s something seriously wrong in our health-care system.”
The first step of the solution, Horwath said, is to invest in alternative care options that keep non-emergency patients out of hospitals.
She said it costs nearly $1,500 per day to keep somebody in hospital, compared to between $600 and $700 per day for a long-term care facility and about $100 per day to provide home care.
“The hospital isn’t necessarily where people need to be when they’re aging or becoming more frail in their health,” she said.
“The more we can provide supports and help at home in a way that’s reliable and in a way that’s meaningful for people and sensitive to their needs, that’s a solution that’s not only more cost effective but it’s much more humane.”
She said the privatization of home care by the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives has left more than 80 per cent of that service conducted on a for-profit basis.
Those kinds of programs and services could play a big role in alleviating chronic gridlock at facilities like the regional hospital, which is constantly plagued by more patients than they receive funding for and resulting budget constraints.
“You need to be responsible as a provincial government in terms of making sure as you try to shift things around you’re not leaving wider gaps than we already have,” Horwath said.
“That’s something we’re hearing from not only patients but frontline providers that the supports simply aren’t there, the community-based solutions don’t exist and it’s the patients that are paying the price.”
