With the next provincial election growing closer by the day, the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions and Canadian Union of Public Employees (OCHU-CUPE) put on a demonstration in front of Joseph Brant Hospital this afternoon (Feb. 6) to draw attention to Ontario’s healthcare crisis.
The demonstration included lining up gurneys along part of Lakeshore Road to symbolize the increase in ‘hallway medicine,’ or patients receiving care in hospital storage rooms and hallways on gurneys due to a lack of open beds.
“What we’re trying to do is draw attention to this,” Michael Hurley, president of OCHU-CUPE, said. “It’s really caused by funding not keeping pace with an aging population and population growth leaving all elements of home care, long-term care and hospitals deeply stressed and struggling. We’re trying to make this more of an issue of conversation in the provincial election.”
More than 1,800 people are currently on stretchers in hospital hallways across the province, up from 826 in June 2018 when Premier Doug Ford promised to end hallway medicine.
The union also drew attention to the fact that around 2.5 million people in Ontario don’t have family doctors, 250,000 are waiting for surgeries and around 50,000 are waiting for long-term care.
“People die as a result of shortcomings in the healthcare system,” Hurley said. “Or their families struggle to provide care at home to people who should be cared for in an institutional setting because of their complex needs. Many of these people are waiting beyond the medically recommended wait limits for their surgeries, and you can imagine the anxiety that would cause for you and the anxiety it would cause for anyone who cares about you.”
Joseph Brant Hospital operated at almost 95 per cent capacity during the first half of 2024 despite the union stating that 85 per cent capacity is the recommended maximum bed occupancy level and that going over that could result in overflow into hallways and other hospital areas.
Burlington’s hospital also had a shortfall of $1.8 million in the first half of 2024, with hospitals across Ontario facing a cumulative $800 million shortfall over the same period.
OCHU-CUPE recommended multiple solutions that could be pursued in order to address and alleviate the current province-wide healthcare crisis, including increasing hospital capacity, improving compensation and working conditions for hospital staff, providing free tuition to students in nursing and Personal Support Worker programs, ending private sector delivery of long-term care and community health services, banning agency nurses to reduce staffing costs and more.
“This hospital doesn’t know, from one month to the next, what it’s funding will be for 2025,” Hurley said. “Stable, multi-year funding is needed, and so is an infusion of resources. We’re calling for $2 million a year for the next four years to clear the wait list of surgeries, diagnostic tests and to get people off of stretchers. We’re also asking the government to do what it promised to do in long-term care, which is to meet staffing standards and build the beds.”
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