Following the Ontario Well being Coalition’s new report launched Wednesday, the chair of the Waterloo Area Well being Coalition is looking for an open investigation into the funding practices of the Ontario authorities.
Jim Stewart, chair of the Waterloo Area Well being Coalition, stated personal clinics are being funded at a “tremendous rate” whereas public hospitals are being chronically underfunded.
“[Private clinics] are feasting on public dollars and our public hospitals are being starved,” stated Stewart.
The report, titled Robbing the general public to construct the personal: The Ford authorities’s hospital privatization scheme discovered that personal clinics acquired a 212 per cent improve in funding in a single 12 months, rising from $38,693,100 in 2022-23 to $120,693,100 in 2023-24. On the similar time public hospitals solely acquired a rise of 0.5 per cent to their working budgets this 12 months.
In 2023, there have been 1,199 very important service closures throughout the province because of a scarcity of funding. In Waterloo Area, 5 working rooms have been closed throughout the three hospitals; Cambridge Memorial Hospital, Grand River Hospital and St. Mary’s Common Hospital. Stewart stated there may be at the moment 140 vacant registered nurse spots in Waterloo Area, and that hospital workers are feeling “burnt out, frustrated and disrespected.”
“Mr. Ford keeps talking about how they have hired 30,000 nurses across Ontario. If that is true, where are they? We would like to know where they are,” stated Stewart.
Final week, the Ontario authorities made two funding bulletins in Waterloo Area completely $3.4 million between three well being centres and clinics. Stewart stated these bulletins spoke to the “propagandistic perspective” of the Ford authorities. He famous the FAO discovered the Ontario authorities underspent on well being care over the previous couple of years.
“They might be throwing out a couple of dollars here and there, but the reality is that the Ford government is chronically underfunding our public hospitals and health care system,” stated Stewart.
The report was performed during the last 12 months and consists of interviews with hospital workers throughout the province, the Monetary Accountability Officer (FAO) and Freedom of Info Act (FOIA) requests.
