The Ontario Health Coalition (OHC), which represents more than 500 organizations, says it is consulting with lawyers and calling emergency meetings with union leaders and health care organizations to protect public hospitals from any privatization efforts led by Premier Doug’s government Ford. The announcement also came as the Ontario Nurses Association once again spoke out against the Bill 124 wage cap at Queen’s Park, while new details emerged about how much busy hospitals are spending on private sector nurses. “We will fight them with everything we have,” executive director Natalie Mehra said at a morning news conference. “Everything is on the table to defend our public, not-for-profit health care system. We will not allow — without a big fight — the for-profit privatization of Ontario’s hospitals.” Last week, the Ford government said it was looking at a number of ways to address health care staffing shortages that have led to emergency departments across the province being closed for hours or days at a time. Sylvia Jones, the new health minister, has given few details on what that might look like, but she recently said Ontarians won’t have to pay out-of-pocket for health care services. Mehra says the OHC wants clarity and transparency about exactly which services could be privatized and which companies the provincial government will use to provide those services. WATCH: Ontario Health Coalition’s Natalie Mehra pledges to fight any privatization in Ontario’s health care system:
Ontario health advocate sees ‘fight of our lives’ against private health care
Ontario needs to improve its health care system and not engage in “bold new experiments with for-profit privatization,” says Ontario Health Coalition executive director Natalie Mehra. “We don’t need bold new experiments with profit-making privatizations,” Mehra said. “We need a government that is committed to governance, to meaningfully improving the public health system.”
The use of agency nurses is increasing
Nursing is emerging as a place where private companies are already involved in hospital operations. University Health Network (UHN), which operates Toronto Western Hospital, provided five years of data on nurse utilization from 11 different private providers to CBC Toronto. In 2018, it spent just over $1 million to hire nurses from various agencies to support work in emergency departments and intensive care units. It actually spent less annually over the next three years, but the number increased in 2022. This year, UHN said it has spent just over $6.7 million on nurses. More than $4 million of that spending was tied to hiring private nurses to work in the ICU. UHN also released data on its efforts to recruit and retain full-time nurses. At the end of July, the hospital chain said it had hired 604 nurses, but had also lost 331 by the end of June. UHN said since the beginning of the year, the network recorded more than 1,000 vacancies. Chief executive Kevin Smith said there are currently about 600 vacancies — almost three times as many as usual. “University Health Network … cares for some of the sickest people in Canada and simply cannot be unavailable for urgent care and emergencies,” he said. “Solutions at this time had to include the nursing service.” While nurses are in demand in hospitals, the Ontario Health Coalition says workers such as MRI technologists, CT technologists, lab technologists and respiratory therapists are also needed. (Oak Valley Health) Sunnybrook Hospital released similar data on the use of agency nurses, which was also published in an investigation by the Toronto Star on Tuesday. This hospital has seen a steady increase in private nursing spending, with annual totals rising from $4.5 million in 2018-2019 to $8.2 million in 2021-2022. Catherine Hoy, president of the Ontario Nurses Association, said private practices pay nurses significantly more, often to do exactly the same work they leave behind when they leave their hospital jobs. “If they’re getting paid $110 an hour to go and work at my exact same hospital, in my exact same department, why shouldn’t I go and work at an agency?” he said. Hoi said the government should pass a bill limiting how much hospitals can spend on nurses. Ford told reporters last Friday that while he can’t dictate what private companies pay their employees, the government will take care of frontline workers and continue to “put billions of dollars” into health care.
Private clinics could exacerbate staff shortages, expert says
Dr. Dick Zautman, the former chief of staff at Scarborough Health Network and a professor at Queen’s University and the University of Toronto, says private clinics threaten to drive skilled health workers away from the public system and exacerbate shortages. personnel and could also erase an important part of Canada’s identity. “We should be very proud of our hospitals and our public health care system,” Zoutman said. “To think we’re going to throw it away then for a for-profit model that makes money just goes against what Canadians hold dear and our value system in this country.” Zutman says instead of privatizing services, the province should expand them. “We’ve worked very, very hard to make our hospitals as efficient and effective as possible,” Zoutman said, noting that Ontario has the lowest cost per hospital stay and the shortest length of stay in the country. “I worry that we may have gone too far.”
