Ontario needs to look at the net increase of health care staff to address quality of care issues, said a researcher for Ontario’s branch of Canada’s largest public sector union. The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) released a report this week indicating Ontario health funding will not be enough to maintain current levels of service. Doug Allan, researcher for CUPE, said updates from the government may seem positive but fail to show the whole picture.
The CUPE report indicates Ontario will need more than 16,000 new hospital beds in the next ten years. The provincial government only plans on adding 3,000 beds in the same amount of time.
The Ministry of Health said in an email to rabble.ca that the current government has made record investments in the healthcare system. The ministry emphasized they have invested more than $85 billion this year, which is a 31 per cent increase from 2018.
The government says they are bringing more staff into the system as well. The Ministry of Health said there has been a record number of new registered nurses in the last two years.
Allan said the record number of new registered nurses doesn’t necessarily mean the health care system has seen a net increase in health staff. He said many new nurses may be coming into the profession, but many seasoned nurses are leaving.
“They don’t look at the number of people who have quit or retired, or died,” Allan said.
The Ministry of health says 32,000 people have registered to become nurses, but Allan says the net increase is likely closer to 11,000.
“It’s a bit misleading what they’re getting at,” Allan said, “and it does not, again, address the actual need.”
A net increase in healthcare workers would require improved working conditions, according to Allan. He highlighted violence and heavy workload as factors that repel potential workers.
“It’s not great if you want to actually retain a workforce and have a workforce that wants to come to work,” Allan said.
“We have a big problem, and it’s driven to a large extent by this government,” Allan added. “It’s created an unpleasant place to work in healthcare.”
The Ministry of Health asserts that they have added many new nurses, some of them have come in after the province broke down barriers for internationally educated health care workers.
“Together these changes have allowed Ontario to achieve some of the lowest wait times across the country and the highest attachment rate to primary care,” the ministry wrote in their email.
Allan said the government’s statement in response to the report does not address the actual needs of Ontarians, still he said he hopes the union and community allies can maintain public pressure to force better investment in health care.
“In the end, [the government] has to come through, or the crisis deepens and leaks out in other ways,” Allan said.
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