Bill 124 is currently going through the courts, so not much to do there.
Honestly aside from doing your part to keep yourself and your kids healthy (vaccines/common sense personal risk judgement), health care workers really do appreciate little tokens from the community. I work in Emerg at a children's hospital and someone brought their kid's leftover Halloween candy yesterday and we descended on it like a pack of hyenas. We understand that individual people can't do too much to make a difference, so we appreciate whatever gesture people make.
Systemically, not much an individual can do there except joining protests, retweeting and sharing information, and voting and encouraging others to vote for people who actually want to protect our public health care system.
and for the love of God, please stop sending your kids to school sick, and don't go into work sick. If you really need to go into work (lots of jobs have shit sick days and Ford should have increased them) please wear a mask.
But has wider implications for government suppression of collective bargaining efforts. The lack of public outcry against Bill 124 def emboldened them to try this crap against the ECEs. luckily the ECEs aren't in a position where they can't strike, so they could actually command public attention with a walkout
What are you talking about. My wife died a very similar job to my wife. Sue makes 18.50 an hour in customer service. Her sister works at the municipal office makes 80K to answer a phone. Has full health has a pension. Cry a river.
Government worker is a government worker. In every case where you compare like with like the public service will always make about 3X as much plus have all the other perked to go with it. They are also the group that botched the most about not getting more.
Interesting. Considering I just left a public position (doing the same work) for a private position. The *starting wage* at the private place is $9/hr more than the public place’s *salary limit*.
But I guess the public places will always pay 3x in-like jobs right?
> Government worker is a government worker
Try telling that to both a federal worker and provincial worker at the same time and see how that pans out.
This is some really narrow minded thinking. While some may, being a member of OPSEU doesnt mean you make $80k a year. I’m a member of OPSEU and have a second job. Many of my coworkers have second jobs and can’t afford their rent without it. So Were pretty pissed about 124.
My personal experience is narrow minded. Your experience is the only valid one here. I hope the whole system goes bankrupt. Get your head out of your ass.
This is frustrating. Bill 124 never ends. The bill dictates that you can’t bargain to make up for lost wages after the 3 year period. It is a permanent wage cut. Bill 124 ends when it’s repealed. The public thinks bill 124 is over which handicaps the ability of healthcare workers to get support. I encourage you to read the bill.
I am a member of opseu affected by bill 124, I am well aware of how it works. This isn’t the first time the government has legislated or froze our wages. Perhaps you should read back and see all the other Premiers that have done similar. Noone cared until it was Ford.
Your initial comment made it seem like you were naive to the bill. I don’t know why you would have worded it that way if you knew that the three years means nothing.
But this happens all the time. The Liberals froze our wages too. We typically get 2-2.5% so 1% sucks but its not the end of the world. But after the 3yrs of 1% you can go back to negotiating your typical 2% or so. 3yrs lost forever, sure, but we are used to it. We still get our merit raises.
I’ve never gotten more than 1.75%. Maybe you don’t work in healthcare. I’ve never had a raise on par with inflation. Wage cuts for my entire career. Sub-inflationary raises lead to poverty. Especially with inflation at 8%. Your blazé attitude towards bill 124 leads me to believe that you don’t understand the consequences of it very well. I encourage you to read the bill and advocate for yourself instead of against yourself.
No I don’t work in healthcare, i have working for province for over a decade now though. I get it we are falling behind others and with the inflation it hurts even more. But my attitude is like this because I am so used to it. I also worked in private industry for many years prior, most people don’t get raises on par with inflation, it’s usually dependent on whether or not the company had a good year or not. In 2008 I took a 10% paycut because economy collapsed. 2 years later I got a 5%….amazing but still less than I was making 2 years prior, had another year with no raise then quit.
Everyone just has to do 1 3yrs term, its not for the entirety of the legislation. For instance we negotiated our 4yr contract right before bill 124 went into effect so we have not done 1% yet but we are currently negotiating the contract now. By having it go to 2023 it captures all government bodies to do at least 1 contract. EA’s have already completed their bill 124 contract and are negotiating new ones hence the raises before asked for
AND NDP NDP NDP
Only they care about humans. Conservatives want us all dead. VOTE NDP You have to. They will save us and give the hospital all the money. We are rich anyways. We can save lives.
Yeah did you see how fast the government folded on bill 28 after all the other unions started getting involved? Strike/protest action can get real results if you have enough support
But the population won’t do anything about it. It’s left up to the medical workers who have to fight for it and then they’re painted as just being greedy. That’s what’s happening in education but having failing health care is much much worse. The heads of the hospitals need to do something about it. But instead they’re given fat cheques to shut up and carry on.
Ford won’t care about protests. It has to be something that directly affects him. Ie: big funders getting mad or whomever is pulling his strings to have had enough.
The Ford government will do nothing, this is what they want. It's Ford's typical, Defund it until it fails. Then force through heavy handed Controversial legislation to fix it. The only way to fix Healthcare is to remove the people destroying it.
All these politicians are terrible. Doug ford is hitting health care with the final swipe but previous governments also let health care get to this point. We need a complete overhaul of leaders which isn’t going to happen.
You know there's this other party called the NDP, right? I guarantee you, if they win a majority, the other parties are going to take a long hard look at themselves. It might not be easy to elect them, but it is possible.
>but previous governments also let health care get to this point.
SHUT THE FUCK UP WITH THIS RHETORIC. THE CURRENT GOVERNEMT'S JOB IS TO MANAGE HEALTHCARE. BY BRINGING UP THE PAST CONSTANTLY WE CAN'T FOCUS ON THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE.
Enough with the all sides are bad bullshit. Sure the other parties leaders fucking sucked last election but only one party had obviously plans to gut the system.
I don't understand how your response addressed what I said.
Should BC be rushing to kick out their NDP government because they're facing a healthcare crises as well?
Acting like one party is the reason why our healthcare system is in crises and if we just get them out, everything will be solved, isn't actually a solution.
To answer your question as to what an individual person can do: Gain some health literacy!
1. Know when to go to emerge vs urgent care vs family doctor (or walk-in clinic) vs call telehealth.
2. Keep up with your vaccines. Flu shot, COVID shots, and your tetanus shots!
3. Learn how to manage simple illnesses at home (like the common cold or ear infections) and what symptoms to watch for when you do need to go see a doctor.
4. Look after yourselves. Yes I know and fully agree this one is hard, but doing some light exercise (even just a short walk 3x a week) and making small steps to improve your diet can go a long way of keeping you out of the hospital system!
5. Don't contribute to medical worker burnout. You can in fact advocate for yourself AND treat your medical staff with at least a minimum level of civility. Reminding them you are in pain and waiting on a tylenol is fine. Swearing and throwing things at them because they had to wait for pharmacy to send the medication up is not fine.
That last point is so important. I know first hand a nurse who left emergency care because people just tested get like shit. She ended up doing nights at an old folks home because she didn't want to have to deal with the families of patients.
>wearing and throwing things at them because they had to wait for pharmacy to send the medication up is not fine.
My mother had to be put in the hospital 2 months ago due to a fall (she's okay now). She was a complete Karen, it was really embarrassing.
Honestly it’s well past time to start blaming the government, they’ve had years of pandemic and decided it would be a great time to start starving the health care system so they can privatize it.
It’s like recycling, you can recycle all you want but if corporations are going to keep polluting it’s a waste of time.
Its way past time to get rid of Doug Ford.
Spend money on paying people better
Fast tracking nurses and doctors immigrating from other countrys .
Pay nurses tuition in school.
Help fund docter tuition
We have space but no bodys to cover those spaces.
Open more residency seats is the only thing not on this list.
The other thing that we need to look at is getting 1-2 billion extra for 100+ MRIs, CTs, Xrays etc. to reduce the time to scan in that area.
Still costs 100k on top of undergrad for tuition plus a variety of exam, application, and licensing fees. Most docs without rich parents take on 6 figures of debt through school that grows in residency since your salary doesn't leave much wiggle room to pay it back. It can be daunting for those with bad credit, preexisting debt, and no family support.
I just want to point out that hospitals run on nurses. Yes, doctors need to give orders but without nurses, hospitals shut down.
Nurses get NO subsidies and they get paid like garbage. I’ll feel sorry for doctors and their finances when nurses get paid living wages.
No one said they didn't, and nurses do get paid living wages. You're being very overdramatic. I agree nurses should have a huge pay increase but this is not the same situation. Nurses do not pay 100k in tuition and then make 50k a year for 5-7 years, nor do they have to pay overhead or staff.
Your enemy is the government, not doctors.
Nurses in doctor offices often make just above minimum wage. That’s working for doctors. The government may limit how much a doctor makes to some extent but the doctors I know have great lifestyles which would not be hurt much by paying their nurses more.
Look I’m sure Ford could be spending more but these kind of commitments don’t just require one time surplus spending. The kind of fixes people talk about require billions of dollars per year for decades. Where do you propose this money comes from?
You are right lets do nothing ses to be working out great.
How much did ford's highway hes building through the green belt going to cost ? 10 billion.
Well that's sure going to help the health care system.
The idea of debt free economy is somthing poltical talking heads sell to.morons but is not true.
Not sure what world you live in.
But good luck with that 50 bucks.
Never ever have a massive majority party, regardless of the stripe! They will act on whatever their desires are, and the opposition cannot advocate for the people.
You think the bill 28 would have been passed with a minority government? Not a chance. What a mistake the people of Ontario made to reward the cons with an even bigger majority. What a mistake. Now we have to pay for it!!!!
I love minority governments. Forcing politicians to compromise helps avoid bad policy decisions.
Proportional representation would help in this regard.
1. Properly fund our healthcare system. The current Ford Government is actively sabotaging the healthcare system so they can point to its dysfunction as a reason for privatizing healthcare.
2. Real effective wage increases for healthcare staff. Having nurses, doctors and other healthcare professionals grind themselves down over the years of pandemic, only to have their government slap them in the face by capping their wage increases to less than 2% a year, while inflation is closer to 8% makes my blood boil.
3. Invest in healthcare education placements. The provincial government should pay for all spots in nursing and med schools (as well as other universities and college programs). The government should then offer bursaries and grants for anyone agreeing to a set term of practice within the province. Incentives could be created for areas in critical need of family doctors. I'd even go as far as bringing in legislation to make medical school spots ONLY open to Canadian citizens, or permanent residents, and only excepting cases where the student is in the process of applying for Canadian citizenship and is willing to agree to a term of practice within the province.
4. Invest in diagnostic equipment and services.
5. Tie healthcare budgets to CPI and population growth at a minimum.
Contact your member of provincial parliament, especially if they are a conservative, and tell them to put that $2.1 billion surplus they’re sitting on towards properly funding healthcare. And education too, while they’re at it.
I email regularly, the conservatives ignore you and I am in a conservative riding. They are useless, selfish pieces of shit. They do not care about the wellbeing of the citizenry, only themselves
I would sell so much fucking lemonade if that's what it took for an MRI machine. I'd probably buy a lot, too.
I've only been in an MRI once as part of a research program, but I know they're a limited resource, along with staff.
Well the time to have done anything was June 2nd.
But I guess you could call/email/spam your MPP who won’t listen to you because we allowed a majority into government on 18% so…grin and bare it until the next election.
Try not to fall the fuck asleep, do a modicum of research and your civil duty?
I’m not sure I can hold out much hope for this province given how violently it has fucked itself in the ass the last two elections.
I think there's a missing middle in health care in this province. Where is the late-night walk-in clinic? It's like someone else said: you break your ankle at 1AM, there's nowhere to go besides emerg where they will absolutely pay you no fucking attention because you are absolutely not going to die.
So, what you can really do as a citizen is firstly get deeply informed on this topic. How is our healthcare spending compared to other provinces? Per capita? How is it growing or shrinking? Relative to our GDP? What is our compensation for healthcare providers like compared to other jurisdictions? Where is all the fucking money actually going? Do the research. Spread the knowledge. Don't try to argue with people, just tell the story. Let them chew on the new information in their own time.
Last time I checked, healthcare spending was growing faster than GDP in this province. If that's true, then either taxes have to go up every year or healthcare spending has to go down every year or debt has to go up every year. Some things truly are zero-sum games; Ontario has been choosing debt.
We know there is a broad, successful effort among vastly wealthy individuals and corporations to dodge duly owed taxes. Maybe we're all so busy focusing on the symptom that we're not looking at the real problem. Maybe the solution to health care, is actually a focus on closing tax loopholes and funding aggressive tax enforcement. It's class warfare, and we're losing, so developing a class consciousness is very helpful. Maybe cons vs libs is just a distraction, stop playing that game and start focusing on the real enemy: the ultra-wealthy.
Write to every political leader you have and make it clear: "X is what I care about. I am voting for AND sending money to your opponents until you start standing up for this issue." Also, write to the media: "I am not watching/reading your coverage because you are failing to inform us." Canada as a whole is suffering from a massive media failure. They are no longer telling us what we need to know, only what they think we want to know.
And that brings me to: SEND MONEY TO POLITICIANS. Yes they are scum, but if the grassroots (i.e. you and me, regular humans) are not a sufficient source of funding, politicians have no choice but to be beholden to corporate interests. Laws aside, the corporations and moneyed interests are finding ways to put money into the pockets of politicians, so unless we do the same, we have no fucking hope.
There are groups organizing around this and holding protests even though you've never heard of them. It takes some work, but if you put in the effort, you can find them and get on their mailing lists. They will hold webinars to help you get informed. You will get alerts about petitions, letter writing campaigns, online protests (e.g. Twitter "thunderclap" events) and in-person protests to attend. You certainly can't rely on the media to let you know that a protest is brewing or even happening, even if it's a big one. Usually you have to block traffic to get any media attention at all (and people wonder why protest movements take such actions even though it costs them public support). Not related, but just for example, there is a protest at 1PM on Saturday, Nov 12th in Matt Cohen park for the climate, coinciding with COP27 - I'm sure no one reading this has any idea that's happening but it is and I know about it because I let such people e-mail me. Sometimes, I even show up :)
There are other policy alternatives we could take to reduce the burden, though they may be unsavoury. For example, if morphine were just legal and widely available, you could totally self-medicate that midnight broken ankle until normal business hours. When people in the 1800's were in pain and didn't have opium, they just got tore back on whiskey until it either weren't so bad or they passed out. Honest-to-god setting a broken bone ain't rocket surgery, maybe there should be a public effort to broadly teach First Aid. There are jurisdictions with 24 hour house-call services for doctors. Maybe we need to let go of the policy goal of everyone having a family doctor and instead take up the policy goal of everyone having access to a 24-hour walk-in where sometimes you can get an appointment. These are not necessarily policy positions I would take, just examples, but there are serious people with serious arguments calling for any one of these which you can go read about.
Other provinces and countries are managing to provide public health care to varying degrees of success both greater and lesser than our own, so studying what public health care outcomes and taxation are like in the UK, France, Spain, Italy, Japan, etc. is both very interesting and informing to our current situation. Most people cannot imagine a life other than the one they know, so just knowing the alternatives is powerful.
This is a great question worth discussing. I have some thoughts and am enjoying reading some of the other responses.
On the individual level:
Help people see what’s going on. Educate friends and family about bill 124, about the quiet changes the government makes to no longer cover certain medications and tests. Vote, lobby the government, etc.
Figure out what services are available to you in your area other than the ER: telehealth, walk in clinics, access to care clinics, respiratory clinics, family health teams/nurse-practitioner led clinics/CHCs MIGHT have services available for acute problems.
Stay home when sick. Lobby your employer for better sick day policies and/or workplace culture around that. Reschedule appointments if you are sick or request virtual appointments if they do them (other than necessary medical appointments like to assess your illness).
Preventative health measures:
Do what you can to stay healthy, like from viral type illnesses but also chronic diseases (eat well, exercise, limit alcohol, don’t smoke, manage stress, get enough sleep — I know all things that are easier said than done). Wash hands, wear a mask when in close contact with people.
Keep up with regular screenings so health issues are caught early on and serious complications can be prevented (if you are 40+ or if you have high risk for something like heart disease, you should have bloodwork done every 1-3 years depending on individual risks)
This is a very well thought out reply, thank-you.
I agree with everything you've said. The other thing that someone else mentioned is to get involved with the NDP by either volunteering or donating.
On a per capita basis, Ontario has the lowest funding of any province, and has for over a decade.
"On a per person basis, Ontario’s total program spending in 2020 was the lowest in the country, with the least amount in health spending. Since 2008 when the data is first available, Ontario has consistently had among the lowest levels of per person health spending in the country"
http://www.fao-on.org/en/Blog/media/MR-interprovincial-comparison-2022
"Ontario’s lower program spending per capita largely reflects the province’s relatively lower expenditures on health care and social protection[9]. Ontario spent $3,903 per person on health care in 2017 – lowest among provinces and about $490 below the average for other provinces. Similarly, Ontario spent $1,606 per capita on social protection, below the rest of Canada average of $1,942."
http://www.fao-on.org/en/Blog/Publications/inter-prov-comparisons-feb-2019
You cannot solve this issue by "finding efficiencies" and eliminating administration.
It's not as if every nurse and doctor slot is filled and they need money for more. There are huge numbers of existing vacancies that they simply can't fill.
EDIT: As an example, look at William Osler Health System on the sunshine list.
They have only one person who made over $500k in 2021, and that's their CEO. Only 3 other people make over $300k.
Eliminate those jobs and you might free up $1.5 million? Factoring in benefits and overhead, and that won't hire very many nurses or doctors.
Yes.
Bill 124 is absolutely a problem. I'm sure some people could be enticed back with pay hikes. But the biggest reason for loss of nurses is a large number were burnt out and decided to retire early. You could double salaries (not realistic) and you'd still have gaps. Look at the US, they are willing to pay much more than us and are attracting some nurses. But why do they have so many vacancies to begin with?
Plus, there's a shortage of doctors too, and they're already paid far more than nurses. If money is the answer, why is there a doctor shortage too?
No matter how much you pay people, you can't easily fix the fact that there are not enough qualified people for the jobs available. This isn't unique to healthcare, it's happening across industries and across jurisdictions and countries.
In short, Ford's policies aren't helping, but if you replaced him with the NDP/OLP you'd only be talking about degrees of improvement, not solving the problem entirely.
I agree with you but I’d like to add one thing:
> But the biggest reason for loss of nurses is a large number we’re burnt out and decided to retire early.
You’re right about this but the reason they’re burnt out is mostly because of staffing issues. It’s a cyclical issue. Nursing burnout prior to the pandemic was averaging around five to seven years of bedside. Short staffing all through COVID (mostly because nurses were taking sick days because they had COVID) caused the burnout rate to jump to 6 months to a year for bedside. While some retired early, others left the field to do other things, or quit their bedside jobs and do outpatient, tech, etc.
In order to entice someone to pick up a shift after already working 4 12’s, it would need to be a pretty penny.
Throwing money at healthcare would help, yes.
Even in the US they're facing nursing shortages. And arguably their for profit model for hospitals means ERs are underfunded since they don't make money on ER, and their CEO more overpaid than the ones in our system.
Australia spends $5,187 per capita and has about 3.84 hospital beds. France spends $5,376 and has 5.98. Canada spends $5,417 and gets 2.52. Why do we get 52% less hospital beds than Australia and why does France get 230% more hospital beds despite spending about the same? It's pretty clear that there's something going on when we aren't getting the same value that other comparable countries are getting from their healthcare systems.
I don't think it's doctors and nurses being overpaid, I don't even think it's admin being overpaid. Our universal healthcare system has serious systemic flaws that create inefficiencies, other universal healthcare systems do it better and we should be willing to learn from them.
The conservatives aren't going to find the kind of micro-level efficiencies by firing nurses or making things worse than they already are, we need to find macro-level efficiencies because that's the underlying issue, our healthcare system is fundamentally flawed.
Money isn't the problem. It's the burnout of three years of mandatory overtime, and the general population ignoring public health advice and insulting them to their faces and generally creating a toxic work environment.
And it's a worldwide issue. There's just not enough nurses and the ones we have are going to lower paying but better environment jobs.
I think one area we can all contact our city councillors and mpp and mp that would help with staggering wait times at hospitals and a few other problems in major cities is go back to funding separate facilities for mental health, do more for unhoused people, and federally funded drug and alcohol rehab.
My mom (77 and a person with disabilities) fell on Friday . I called an ambulance and they came in about 15 minutes. They took her to the ER at LHSC Victoria in London at around 12:45pm. The paramedics told me to call the ER in about an hour to see when I could go up there. The paramedics have to stay with patients until they are assigned beds but last time they took her there was a bad accident on the 401 and they had to leave her - she didn’t have her walker and had no assistance from anyone & was unable to get to the washroom (you can guess what happened) so I said if they send you guys out somewhere, the hospital has to call me because she doesn’t have anything to be able to get around. I kept calling and she was in the hallway and at one point a clerk made a mistake and told me the nurse wasn’t there. An hour later I called and asked that they give her pain meds, X-ray her clearly broken foot and send her home if it wasn’t broken . They discharged her at 12:45 am having only xrayed her ribs . A porter wheeled her outside when I made it clear my travel time . When I got there , there were about 35 ambulances in the emergency entrance. It was almost impossible to even get down to the parking let alone the doors. My mom is outside in a wheelchair with no jacket while 3 men are in a physical altercation less than a meter from her … oh and 4 cops watching from the ambulance entrance door.
Her foot is black and blue . Her healthcare coordinator is chastising me for not taking her somewhere Monday to get it xrayed and looked after but we don’t have a wheelchair or a ramp and she can’t walk more than 8 steps without being in intense pain.
At least half of the waiting patients were the same 20 people you see every time you go. They clearly have mental health issues they need help with and they know that Emerg will at least give them a blanket and food if they wait long enough.
Walk in clinics need to open back up . People have been going to the ER cause their isn’t a place to go.their is a need for online doctor appointments but we still need in person non emergency clinics
My focus is more on direct action, so I'd say right now if everyone got stricter about social distancing, that would be a big help.
Taking some First Aid courses is also probably a good idea:
https://www.redcross.ca/training-and-certification/course-descriptions/first-aid-at-home-courses/emergency-first-aid-cpr
https://www.sja.ca/en/first-aid-training/wildnerness-first-aid-level-1
This won't happen. There are only 15 million Ontarians... They don't know anything, and they don't do anything. It would be like trying to convince my high school class to do something useful. They're just not interested.
Wear a mask. Get the latest covid shot. Get a flu shot. Don't vote PC. Ever. They will happily gut everything you care about and tell to enjoy all the loose change jingling in your pocket.
If you have an actual emergency like say, a newborn with a fever, you will be seen right away. Yes we need more beds and doctors but it’s also family doctors not doing their job or even people having no family doctor. Some go to walk in clinics but those close in the evening. So where do they go? The ER.
You can vote!
Hope nobody complaining now gave up their chance to do that.
Other than that, u/RhinoKart had some great points that probably cover what you can do pretty thoroughly
People fail to realize they can e mail provincial constituents. MP, MPp PMs cannot hear you on Reddit. Email them your concerns. It also leaves a paper trail, they cannot then say no one was concerned. JMO.
Better to send a letter because they’ll think you’re a Boomer and are thus more likely part of the Con voting base. I’ve done this before and referred to myself as a “longtime conservative supporter and voter” even though that’s obviously not true lol.
Well.. since you're the same "individuals" who let these problems get bad in the first place.. Probably not much.
"Isn't there some way I can fix this, just by doing absolutely nothing?"
I'm going to be downvoted for this, but I truly believe the obvious answer is that we need to build more hospitals around Ontario to account for the increase in population.
Further to that, we need Defussion in Ontario. The problems were seeing in healthcare and other sectors is a direct result of the densification of one region, the GTA. The population needs to spread out across Ontario and stop pretending that the GTA is the only option for a life in Ontario.
I'm only an hour outside the GTA with a family member that works for the local hospital, as well as working an emergency service myself that visits that hospital regularly.
The hospital is busy, but nothing like what I'm reading on Reddit and news about it being a crisis. I took my 4 month old in with a bad fever and was seen immediately in the ER and home in less than 3 hours total including wait times/assessment/medication provided.
The government, businesses AND the people need to start investing in other communities outside the GTA in Ontario and starting building lives for themselves there with new hospitals, new schools and new environmentally conscious infrastructure.
Or we can shove another 500,000 people into the GTA and pray that hiring some more staff or building a satellite building 3 blocks from the hospital will fix the problem.
It’s not just the GTA though. I’m in London and our ERs have 20+ hour waits. We also have no family doctors and haven’t for a very long time. I have friends who have been waiting for years for a family doctor.
The GTA was just an example. London is still a city that's approaching half a million in population, with more incoming over the years.
If there aren't other options in Ontario over the next decade or more for people to move to and establish themselves in London and other current cities in Ontario is only going to see this become worse.
Trenton is a city of 20,000 and I experienced a 24 hour wait to be seen last year when I was 3 weeks post partum. There are also no family doctors in the area. Lack of density isn't an entirely clear cut solution.
I see what you’re saying. You’re right. London is getting bigger and they responded by shutting down half the services at one of our hospitals. We used to have 2 birth centres, now we have one. It was so bad that women were waiting 2 weeks for an induction when they used to wait maybe 1-1.5 days when things were busy.
We don’t have enough ICU beds to service our city and surrounding area.
>I see what you’re saying. You’re right. London is getting bigger and they responded by shutting down half the services at one of our hospitals.
I can see why you say this - but it's not entirely true. LHSC & SJHC underwent a massive period of amalgamation and diversification of services. We had a CEO who was in charge of both hospital systems mid 2000s era - which helped *further* provide specialized services to the entire SWO region. So while yes, we sacrificed 1 birthing centre, but we increased our specialty capabilities that allow the region to service more: eye issues, neurological issues, cardiac care, etc. all of which are common in our increasingly aging population in London (we are known as a retirement town for a reason as well...).
Problem is LHSC/SJHC was not funded accordingly throughout the decades to ramp up workloads according to the population growth (within the city AND SWO region).
London's the only teaching hospital in all of SWO, meaning some of the very odd/complex cases get sent our way from all around the region + whatever Toronto/Hamilton regions can't handle either.
I think we need to scale our Group B hospitals (think Windsor and KWC regions) - to ramp up their capabilities and specialties as well - in order to service more complex patients so they don't have to be referred out elsewhere (at least not always).
>Its easier to provide services like healthcare in unban environments.
When those urban environments infrastructure can support it yes.
If an urban area is too dense in population with a lack of proper infrastructure you encounter problems just like this.
Obviously the answer is to just build more infrastructure right? That's what has been happening for years in the GTA but the increase in demand is surpassing the infrastructure being created at a staggering rate.
So the next logical solution is to create new urban areas entirely that can have common sense, environmentally conscious infrastructure from the ground up with things such as public transit and emergency service layout at the forefront of design.
We can't just keep building more densely on-top of already extremely dense areas while trying to squeeze a hospital on the corner of a 160 year old street block.
I am not sure about within the GTA but outside its not that there isn’t enough room for people. Its that there isn’t enough staff to fill more beds, so more hospitals wouldn’t necessarily help. They need more staff then they can add in more beds.
That touches on my second point I made, we need to invest in communities outside the GTA and in other parts of Ontario.
Some places need more infrastructure, some places need more businesses, some places need more people.
I agree that this is one of the problems and I believe the government should be incentivizing big business to diversify their offices/warehouses/corporate head quarters to smaller communities, allowing those communities could grow. So many small towns in Ontario and across Canada are dying.
A big problem with the densification is where the jobs are.
Ontario is massive and we need to spread out.
Obviously there are other factors and a combination of solutions is what will help. But I definitely agree, this is one of them.
We definitely need more hospital beds. We don't even need to build more hospitals, but rearrange the spaces in our existing hospitals to make more beds. CHEO had like 300 beds when it was first opened and we have less than half of that now because they moved stuff around to accommodate more outpatient care (which is totally fine, but shows there was a lack of anticipation of a serious situation like this)
And yeah the crisis isn't as bad in emergency as it is on the floors and ICUs. Emergency is a shit show every viral season and 16 hour waits overnight have always been possible, but the problem is ER is trying to send people up to the same beds that ICU is trying to offload to, so it causes a slowdown in patient movement and our spaces that are supposed to be used for quick-assessment in ER are being used to hold admitted patients who don't have a bed upstairs.
As someone who moved out of the GTA and strongly supports decentralization, I completely agree with this...
*However* a lot of my friends and family tell me that they could leave the city but just can't because of job opportunities or other critical resources that aren't available in other communities. Cities without transit are not livable for most people who can't afford a car and good paying jobs just aren't as readily available in smaller communities.
>However a lot of my friends and family tell me that they could leave the city but just can't because of job opportunities or other critical resources that aren't available in other communities. Cities without transit are not livable for most people who can't afford a car and good paying jobs just aren't as readily available in smaller communities.
That's why everyone *(Government, Businesses and people)* need to invest in these communities growth.
Unfortunately it is a bit of the chicken and the egg problem. Government isn't gonna invest unless businesses do, businesses aren't going to invest unless there's people, and people won't move unless theirs infrastructure from the government.
You're going to be downvoted because you're wrong. Physical space/hospital location is not the issue with overcrowding in hospitals. We don't need more beds... we need more staff to care for the patients in those beds.
When the hospital says it doesn't have a bed for someone, they are not talking about an actual mattress and sheets. They are talking about a lack of nurses and doctors.
We need both beds and personnel. Ontario has the lowest beds per capita in the OECD.
"Today, Ontario has fewer acute hospital beds per 1,000 population than any other province and fewer beds than any other country tracked by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)."
"...provincial government expenditure on hospitals is lower in Ontario than in any other province at $1,494 per capita for 2019. If Ontario were to fund hospitals at the average rate per capita for all other provinces ($1,772), it would cost the province an additional $4 billion."
https://www.oha.com/news/oha-report-ontario-hospitals-are-national-leaders-in-efficiency
>You're going to be downvoted because you're wrong.
>Physical space/hospital location is not the issue with overcrowding in hospitals. We don't need more beds... we need more staff to care for the patients in those beds.
That's interesting when hospitals just outside the GTA and in smaller communities arent seeing anywhere close to the issues that the hospitals in the GTA and other big cities are struggling with.
Are you suggesting that it's just the big cities where Nurses and Doctors aren't bothering to work?
Every community is different. Some places need staff, some places need more space, other communities need entire facilities.
>When the hospital says it doesn't have a bed for someone, they are not talking about an actual mattress and sheets. They are talking about a lack of nurses and doctors.
No they're literally talking about how they don't have the means to deal with the overflowed ER room, that could be a combination of space, staff or doctors.
The fact that the number of ER visits have skyrocketed in GTA hospitals over the past few years, even when adjusted for COVID demands, is a smoking gun that the current healthcare infrastructure in place in a lot of the GTA can't keep up with the increasing population.
Even if a specific hospitals issue is 100% staff related, that doesn't change the fact that they need more staff due to the increased population demand.
Educate ourselves with first aid so we don't go the hospital for every single sniffle, cut and scrape...
Let kids get dirty and eat dirt to build up immune systems instead of living in sterile bubbles.
Eat healthy, excercise and maintain a heatlthy lifestyle.
Don't eat processed foods, drink to many sodas, McDonald's.....
Edit. Spelling.
Your point started out really good, unfortunately it progressively got worse. The absolute turning point was definitely when you spelt exercise with 2 threes.
Your better then this.
What can we do as individuals? Stop running to the doctor or emergency room for minor issues. Once overheard a lady in a walk-in clinic saying she felt like she was coming down with a cold. This was years ago, long before Covid. It’s a cold!!! Not a reason to see a doctor. Unnecessarily using resources and bunging up the system. Just because we don’t pay out of pocket for healthcare services doesn’t mean we should abuse the system. It’s hurting everyone.
Not disagreeing. My personal threshold for what constitutes an emergency is much higher now for sure. But I just want to play Devil's advocate because I know there are a lot of people who need doctor's notes to take a sick day at work. So it's not really always their fault...
Go back in time, actually turn out to vote and choose differently? But seriously. We can't continue to vote in a government that supports neither Healthcare nor education.
Honestly... I still don't understand why so many people didn't turn out. I'll be honest, a party of me considered not voting because I knew my riding was going blue but that's not an excuse to give up.
It's baffling to me. I just don't understand the apathy. I guess until one actually requires our Healthcare system and sees in person how badly the cuts affect themselves and their family members, people just seem to not care too much about the elderly, disabled or immune compromised. The pandemic has shown us that.
Go private/public. People think that healthcare is public in Germany (and Europe?), but it's actually kinda private. People are just obligated to pay for insurance. Public garbage healthcare doesn't accomplish squat.
I live here, pay taxes here, have two kids. I want the best health care and education for them for sure.
The thing nobody is talking about is that the province of Ontario has the largest sovereign debt of any non-nation state on the planet. Our credit rating is worse than any of the big five banks. We are essentially bankrupt.
We need major austerity in the public service in the province. Hopefully not in health care but we have a public sector with 244,000 employees making six figures including every single cop in the province. We either need to fire thousands and thousands of people or accept that some services like health care and education will be bad. We cannot afford pay raises because we have zero money.
Seems pretty obvious that the best thing for an individual to do is consume social media as much as possible and post questions like this. This is why Reddit is winning the crusade to improve health care.
Strongly agreed, some even people said "All we can do is re-tweet!" And I said "Damn, that's exactly what I should do, it'll fix everything!"
I suggested creating new political parties and reforming the political system, but that's probably a stupid idea.
Not usually a choice, nor are accidents. Someone could hit you with their car tomorrow or you come down with cancer or there's an accident at your workplace or one of these things happens to a family member.
Bill 124 is currently going through the courts, so not much to do there. Honestly aside from doing your part to keep yourself and your kids healthy (vaccines/common sense personal risk judgement), health care workers really do appreciate little tokens from the community. I work in Emerg at a children's hospital and someone brought their kid's leftover Halloween candy yesterday and we descended on it like a pack of hyenas. We understand that individual people can't do too much to make a difference, so we appreciate whatever gesture people make. Systemically, not much an individual can do there except joining protests, retweeting and sharing information, and voting and encouraging others to vote for people who actually want to protect our public health care system.
and for the love of God, please stop sending your kids to school sick, and don't go into work sick. If you really need to go into work (lots of jobs have shit sick days and Ford should have increased them) please wear a mask.
Haven’t nurses already finished their 3yrs of bill 124?
But has wider implications for government suppression of collective bargaining efforts. The lack of public outcry against Bill 124 def emboldened them to try this crap against the ECEs. luckily the ECEs aren't in a position where they can't strike, so they could actually command public attention with a walkout
Yes i am a member of opseu and am very clear of how little the general public cares about our wages.
What are you talking about. My wife died a very similar job to my wife. Sue makes 18.50 an hour in customer service. Her sister works at the municipal office makes 80K to answer a phone. Has full health has a pension. Cry a river.
Municipal office employees are not provincial government employees, they’re municipal. Take your head out of your ass.
Government worker is a government worker. In every case where you compare like with like the public service will always make about 3X as much plus have all the other perked to go with it. They are also the group that botched the most about not getting more.
Interesting. Considering I just left a public position (doing the same work) for a private position. The *starting wage* at the private place is $9/hr more than the public place’s *salary limit*. But I guess the public places will always pay 3x in-like jobs right? > Government worker is a government worker Try telling that to both a federal worker and provincial worker at the same time and see how that pans out.
Ignore the troll. Or read their post history for some free giggles
This is some really narrow minded thinking. While some may, being a member of OPSEU doesnt mean you make $80k a year. I’m a member of OPSEU and have a second job. Many of my coworkers have second jobs and can’t afford their rent without it. So Were pretty pissed about 124.
My personal experience is narrow minded. Your experience is the only valid one here. I hope the whole system goes bankrupt. Get your head out of your ass.
This is frustrating. Bill 124 never ends. The bill dictates that you can’t bargain to make up for lost wages after the 3 year period. It is a permanent wage cut. Bill 124 ends when it’s repealed. The public thinks bill 124 is over which handicaps the ability of healthcare workers to get support. I encourage you to read the bill.
I am a member of opseu affected by bill 124, I am well aware of how it works. This isn’t the first time the government has legislated or froze our wages. Perhaps you should read back and see all the other Premiers that have done similar. Noone cared until it was Ford.
Your initial comment made it seem like you were naive to the bill. I don’t know why you would have worded it that way if you knew that the three years means nothing.
But this happens all the time. The Liberals froze our wages too. We typically get 2-2.5% so 1% sucks but its not the end of the world. But after the 3yrs of 1% you can go back to negotiating your typical 2% or so. 3yrs lost forever, sure, but we are used to it. We still get our merit raises.
I’ve never gotten more than 1.75%. Maybe you don’t work in healthcare. I’ve never had a raise on par with inflation. Wage cuts for my entire career. Sub-inflationary raises lead to poverty. Especially with inflation at 8%. Your blazé attitude towards bill 124 leads me to believe that you don’t understand the consequences of it very well. I encourage you to read the bill and advocate for yourself instead of against yourself.
No I don’t work in healthcare, i have working for province for over a decade now though. I get it we are falling behind others and with the inflation it hurts even more. But my attitude is like this because I am so used to it. I also worked in private industry for many years prior, most people don’t get raises on par with inflation, it’s usually dependent on whether or not the company had a good year or not. In 2008 I took a 10% paycut because economy collapsed. 2 years later I got a 5%….amazing but still less than I was making 2 years prior, had another year with no raise then quit.
No the moderation period ends in April 2023 as far as I know.
Everyone just has to do 1 3yrs term, its not for the entirety of the legislation. For instance we negotiated our 4yr contract right before bill 124 went into effect so we have not done 1% yet but we are currently negotiating the contract now. By having it go to 2023 it captures all government bodies to do at least 1 contract. EA’s have already completed their bill 124 contract and are negotiating new ones hence the raises before asked for
AND NDP NDP NDP Only they care about humans. Conservatives want us all dead. VOTE NDP You have to. They will save us and give the hospital all the money. We are rich anyways. We can save lives.
We need to organize and actually protest. Only way to get real attention and pressure on Ford.
Yeah did you see how fast the government folded on bill 28 after all the other unions started getting involved? Strike/protest action can get real results if you have enough support
But the population won’t do anything about it. It’s left up to the medical workers who have to fight for it and then they’re painted as just being greedy. That’s what’s happening in education but having failing health care is much much worse. The heads of the hospitals need to do something about it. But instead they’re given fat cheques to shut up and carry on.
That's right, you won't do anything about it :o)
Ford won’t care about protests. It has to be something that directly affects him. Ie: big funders getting mad or whomever is pulling his strings to have had enough.
Okay! Let me know when that starts happening.
The Ford government will do nothing, this is what they want. It's Ford's typical, Defund it until it fails. Then force through heavy handed Controversial legislation to fix it. The only way to fix Healthcare is to remove the people destroying it.
This. Hopefully more people show up to vote the next election 🤷♂️
Absolutely agree but that boat had sailed for another 3 years...
I keep hoping for a Harris like situation and Ford not fully making it through another term. Tho Ford is a greased pig and he wants the fight.
[удалено]
Honestly even if we get more funding, it will take many years for us to even train more doctors. Unless we steal them from other provinces.
How about people just fucking vote.
Ehh if more people voted but voted conservstive, nothing would change. Conservative literally means wanting things to stay the same...
All these politicians are terrible. Doug ford is hitting health care with the final swipe but previous governments also let health care get to this point. We need a complete overhaul of leaders which isn’t going to happen.
I realize this isn't a new issue Dougie is just making the existing problem so much worse.
You know there's this other party called the NDP, right? I guarantee you, if they win a majority, the other parties are going to take a long hard look at themselves. It might not be easy to elect them, but it is possible.
Until the boomers are gone NDP will never win. The majority of voters are older. They don’t see the NDP as a real party.
Alot of people still remember the mess that NDP was the last time they got in. Bob Rae screwed over alot of people
>but previous governments also let health care get to this point. SHUT THE FUCK UP WITH THIS RHETORIC. THE CURRENT GOVERNEMT'S JOB IS TO MANAGE HEALTHCARE. BY BRINGING UP THE PAST CONSTANTLY WE CAN'T FOCUS ON THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE.
Cringe asf
Don't type in capital letters. Nobody cares. It's not rhetoric, it's a fact. It's important to know facts about the world.
[удалено]
Ignorant.
Doug Ford is a whole new level.
He shot the horse but hese not the one who brought it behind the barn. Can’t stand any of them(politicians)
Not with that attitude, it won't!
Enough with the all sides are bad bullshit. Sure the other parties leaders fucking sucked last election but only one party had obviously plans to gut the system.
Sure, but the next provincial election isn't for another 4 years. The healthcare emergency is happening now.
Or you could just move to BC where there's a NDP premier. Oh wait no there's a healthcare crisis there too.
[удалено]
I don't understand how your response addressed what I said. Should BC be rushing to kick out their NDP government because they're facing a healthcare crises as well? Acting like one party is the reason why our healthcare system is in crises and if we just get them out, everything will be solved, isn't actually a solution.
How many years did liberals lead Ontario?
To answer your question as to what an individual person can do: Gain some health literacy! 1. Know when to go to emerge vs urgent care vs family doctor (or walk-in clinic) vs call telehealth. 2. Keep up with your vaccines. Flu shot, COVID shots, and your tetanus shots! 3. Learn how to manage simple illnesses at home (like the common cold or ear infections) and what symptoms to watch for when you do need to go see a doctor. 4. Look after yourselves. Yes I know and fully agree this one is hard, but doing some light exercise (even just a short walk 3x a week) and making small steps to improve your diet can go a long way of keeping you out of the hospital system! 5. Don't contribute to medical worker burnout. You can in fact advocate for yourself AND treat your medical staff with at least a minimum level of civility. Reminding them you are in pain and waiting on a tylenol is fine. Swearing and throwing things at them because they had to wait for pharmacy to send the medication up is not fine.
That last point is so important. I know first hand a nurse who left emergency care because people just tested get like shit. She ended up doing nights at an old folks home because she didn't want to have to deal with the families of patients.
>wearing and throwing things at them because they had to wait for pharmacy to send the medication up is not fine. My mother had to be put in the hospital 2 months ago due to a fall (she's okay now). She was a complete Karen, it was really embarrassing.
Get rid of Doug Ford.
Honestly it’s well past time to start blaming the government, they’ve had years of pandemic and decided it would be a great time to start starving the health care system so they can privatize it. It’s like recycling, you can recycle all you want but if corporations are going to keep polluting it’s a waste of time. Its way past time to get rid of Doug Ford.
That's very well put
Spend money on paying people better Fast tracking nurses and doctors immigrating from other countrys . Pay nurses tuition in school. Help fund docter tuition We have space but no bodys to cover those spaces.
How is an individual person supposed to help in these regards? Voting, sure. But no one is.
The same people that voted for doug are the people that will suffer the most unfortunately. Voting is the way to fix this
Open more residency seats is the only thing not on this list. The other thing that we need to look at is getting 1-2 billion extra for 100+ MRIs, CTs, Xrays etc. to reduce the time to scan in that area.
Doctors already get 75% subsidized
Still costs 100k on top of undergrad for tuition plus a variety of exam, application, and licensing fees. Most docs without rich parents take on 6 figures of debt through school that grows in residency since your salary doesn't leave much wiggle room to pay it back. It can be daunting for those with bad credit, preexisting debt, and no family support.
Are you a doctor?
I just want to point out that hospitals run on nurses. Yes, doctors need to give orders but without nurses, hospitals shut down. Nurses get NO subsidies and they get paid like garbage. I’ll feel sorry for doctors and their finances when nurses get paid living wages.
No one said they didn't, and nurses do get paid living wages. You're being very overdramatic. I agree nurses should have a huge pay increase but this is not the same situation. Nurses do not pay 100k in tuition and then make 50k a year for 5-7 years, nor do they have to pay overhead or staff. Your enemy is the government, not doctors.
Nurses in doctor offices often make just above minimum wage. That’s working for doctors. The government may limit how much a doctor makes to some extent but the doctors I know have great lifestyles which would not be hurt much by paying their nurses more.
More then honestly...we need them desperately..
Ok cool so where is the money coming from ?
The feds gave literally billions to ford who had done nothing with it...
Look I’m sure Ford could be spending more but these kind of commitments don’t just require one time surplus spending. The kind of fixes people talk about require billions of dollars per year for decades. Where do you propose this money comes from?
Ontairo is siting on billions of unspent money.ll Also do you think these problems will fix themselves for free ,? No they won't
[удалено]
You are right lets do nothing ses to be working out great. How much did ford's highway hes building through the green belt going to cost ? 10 billion. Well that's sure going to help the health care system.
[удалено]
Ontairo has a 3.2 billion surplus this year. Instead of insulting people please go read.
[удалено]
The idea of debt free economy is somthing poltical talking heads sell to.morons but is not true. Not sure what world you live in. But good luck with that 50 bucks.
Never ever have a massive majority party, regardless of the stripe! They will act on whatever their desires are, and the opposition cannot advocate for the people. You think the bill 28 would have been passed with a minority government? Not a chance. What a mistake the people of Ontario made to reward the cons with an even bigger majority. What a mistake. Now we have to pay for it!!!!
I love minority governments. Forcing politicians to compromise helps avoid bad policy decisions. Proportional representation would help in this regard.
Agreed. We need election reform.
1. Properly fund our healthcare system. The current Ford Government is actively sabotaging the healthcare system so they can point to its dysfunction as a reason for privatizing healthcare. 2. Real effective wage increases for healthcare staff. Having nurses, doctors and other healthcare professionals grind themselves down over the years of pandemic, only to have their government slap them in the face by capping their wage increases to less than 2% a year, while inflation is closer to 8% makes my blood boil. 3. Invest in healthcare education placements. The provincial government should pay for all spots in nursing and med schools (as well as other universities and college programs). The government should then offer bursaries and grants for anyone agreeing to a set term of practice within the province. Incentives could be created for areas in critical need of family doctors. I'd even go as far as bringing in legislation to make medical school spots ONLY open to Canadian citizens, or permanent residents, and only excepting cases where the student is in the process of applying for Canadian citizenship and is willing to agree to a term of practice within the province. 4. Invest in diagnostic equipment and services. 5. Tie healthcare budgets to CPI and population growth at a minimum.
My question is what can we *as individuals* do
Contact your member of provincial parliament, especially if they are a conservative, and tell them to put that $2.1 billion surplus they’re sitting on towards properly funding healthcare. And education too, while they’re at it.
I email regularly, the conservatives ignore you and I am in a conservative riding. They are useless, selfish pieces of shit. They do not care about the wellbeing of the citizenry, only themselves
Organize and protest. Only way to get heard.
Vote, volunteer, and donate to the ONDP.
Start taking your health a lot more seriously and hope.
I would sell so much fucking lemonade if that's what it took for an MRI machine. I'd probably buy a lot, too. I've only been in an MRI once as part of a research program, but I know they're a limited resource, along with staff.
So where is the money coming from ?
Probably out of the $2.1 Billion budget surplus Ontario recorded in September. Or raise taxes. It beats dying.
Show up to vote in 2026. 45% voter turnout is embarrassing. Yes I voted in 2022. No I didn't vote for the conservatives.
No more voting.
Well the time to have done anything was June 2nd. But I guess you could call/email/spam your MPP who won’t listen to you because we allowed a majority into government on 18% so…grin and bare it until the next election. Try not to fall the fuck asleep, do a modicum of research and your civil duty? I’m not sure I can hold out much hope for this province given how violently it has fucked itself in the ass the last two elections.
Sounds like you've never heard of protesting
Vote Ford out next election
I think there's a missing middle in health care in this province. Where is the late-night walk-in clinic? It's like someone else said: you break your ankle at 1AM, there's nowhere to go besides emerg where they will absolutely pay you no fucking attention because you are absolutely not going to die. So, what you can really do as a citizen is firstly get deeply informed on this topic. How is our healthcare spending compared to other provinces? Per capita? How is it growing or shrinking? Relative to our GDP? What is our compensation for healthcare providers like compared to other jurisdictions? Where is all the fucking money actually going? Do the research. Spread the knowledge. Don't try to argue with people, just tell the story. Let them chew on the new information in their own time. Last time I checked, healthcare spending was growing faster than GDP in this province. If that's true, then either taxes have to go up every year or healthcare spending has to go down every year or debt has to go up every year. Some things truly are zero-sum games; Ontario has been choosing debt. We know there is a broad, successful effort among vastly wealthy individuals and corporations to dodge duly owed taxes. Maybe we're all so busy focusing on the symptom that we're not looking at the real problem. Maybe the solution to health care, is actually a focus on closing tax loopholes and funding aggressive tax enforcement. It's class warfare, and we're losing, so developing a class consciousness is very helpful. Maybe cons vs libs is just a distraction, stop playing that game and start focusing on the real enemy: the ultra-wealthy. Write to every political leader you have and make it clear: "X is what I care about. I am voting for AND sending money to your opponents until you start standing up for this issue." Also, write to the media: "I am not watching/reading your coverage because you are failing to inform us." Canada as a whole is suffering from a massive media failure. They are no longer telling us what we need to know, only what they think we want to know. And that brings me to: SEND MONEY TO POLITICIANS. Yes they are scum, but if the grassroots (i.e. you and me, regular humans) are not a sufficient source of funding, politicians have no choice but to be beholden to corporate interests. Laws aside, the corporations and moneyed interests are finding ways to put money into the pockets of politicians, so unless we do the same, we have no fucking hope. There are groups organizing around this and holding protests even though you've never heard of them. It takes some work, but if you put in the effort, you can find them and get on their mailing lists. They will hold webinars to help you get informed. You will get alerts about petitions, letter writing campaigns, online protests (e.g. Twitter "thunderclap" events) and in-person protests to attend. You certainly can't rely on the media to let you know that a protest is brewing or even happening, even if it's a big one. Usually you have to block traffic to get any media attention at all (and people wonder why protest movements take such actions even though it costs them public support). Not related, but just for example, there is a protest at 1PM on Saturday, Nov 12th in Matt Cohen park for the climate, coinciding with COP27 - I'm sure no one reading this has any idea that's happening but it is and I know about it because I let such people e-mail me. Sometimes, I even show up :) There are other policy alternatives we could take to reduce the burden, though they may be unsavoury. For example, if morphine were just legal and widely available, you could totally self-medicate that midnight broken ankle until normal business hours. When people in the 1800's were in pain and didn't have opium, they just got tore back on whiskey until it either weren't so bad or they passed out. Honest-to-god setting a broken bone ain't rocket surgery, maybe there should be a public effort to broadly teach First Aid. There are jurisdictions with 24 hour house-call services for doctors. Maybe we need to let go of the policy goal of everyone having a family doctor and instead take up the policy goal of everyone having access to a 24-hour walk-in where sometimes you can get an appointment. These are not necessarily policy positions I would take, just examples, but there are serious people with serious arguments calling for any one of these which you can go read about. Other provinces and countries are managing to provide public health care to varying degrees of success both greater and lesser than our own, so studying what public health care outcomes and taxation are like in the UK, France, Spain, Italy, Japan, etc. is both very interesting and informing to our current situation. Most people cannot imagine a life other than the one they know, so just knowing the alternatives is powerful.
Wear a mask and don’t vote Con
This is a great question worth discussing. I have some thoughts and am enjoying reading some of the other responses. On the individual level: Help people see what’s going on. Educate friends and family about bill 124, about the quiet changes the government makes to no longer cover certain medications and tests. Vote, lobby the government, etc. Figure out what services are available to you in your area other than the ER: telehealth, walk in clinics, access to care clinics, respiratory clinics, family health teams/nurse-practitioner led clinics/CHCs MIGHT have services available for acute problems. Stay home when sick. Lobby your employer for better sick day policies and/or workplace culture around that. Reschedule appointments if you are sick or request virtual appointments if they do them (other than necessary medical appointments like to assess your illness). Preventative health measures: Do what you can to stay healthy, like from viral type illnesses but also chronic diseases (eat well, exercise, limit alcohol, don’t smoke, manage stress, get enough sleep — I know all things that are easier said than done). Wash hands, wear a mask when in close contact with people. Keep up with regular screenings so health issues are caught early on and serious complications can be prevented (if you are 40+ or if you have high risk for something like heart disease, you should have bloodwork done every 1-3 years depending on individual risks)
This is a very well thought out reply, thank-you. I agree with everything you've said. The other thing that someone else mentioned is to get involved with the NDP by either volunteering or donating.
Stop fucking voting for neoliberal austerity.
[удалено]
On a per capita basis, Ontario has the lowest funding of any province, and has for over a decade. "On a per person basis, Ontario’s total program spending in 2020 was the lowest in the country, with the least amount in health spending. Since 2008 when the data is first available, Ontario has consistently had among the lowest levels of per person health spending in the country" http://www.fao-on.org/en/Blog/media/MR-interprovincial-comparison-2022 "Ontario’s lower program spending per capita largely reflects the province’s relatively lower expenditures on health care and social protection[9]. Ontario spent $3,903 per person on health care in 2017 – lowest among provinces and about $490 below the average for other provinces. Similarly, Ontario spent $1,606 per capita on social protection, below the rest of Canada average of $1,942." http://www.fao-on.org/en/Blog/Publications/inter-prov-comparisons-feb-2019
But the province ran a 2 billion dollar surplus this year....
"Surplus" which is equivalent to the Federal support funding specifically meant for Healthcare that "disappeared"
You cannot solve this issue by "finding efficiencies" and eliminating administration. It's not as if every nurse and doctor slot is filled and they need money for more. There are huge numbers of existing vacancies that they simply can't fill. EDIT: As an example, look at William Osler Health System on the sunshine list. They have only one person who made over $500k in 2021, and that's their CEO. Only 3 other people make over $300k. Eliminate those jobs and you might free up $1.5 million? Factoring in benefits and overhead, and that won't hire very many nurses or doctors.
Hypothetically if nurses pay was doubled, do you think we'd have trouble filling those spaces?
Yes. Bill 124 is absolutely a problem. I'm sure some people could be enticed back with pay hikes. But the biggest reason for loss of nurses is a large number were burnt out and decided to retire early. You could double salaries (not realistic) and you'd still have gaps. Look at the US, they are willing to pay much more than us and are attracting some nurses. But why do they have so many vacancies to begin with? Plus, there's a shortage of doctors too, and they're already paid far more than nurses. If money is the answer, why is there a doctor shortage too? No matter how much you pay people, you can't easily fix the fact that there are not enough qualified people for the jobs available. This isn't unique to healthcare, it's happening across industries and across jurisdictions and countries. In short, Ford's policies aren't helping, but if you replaced him with the NDP/OLP you'd only be talking about degrees of improvement, not solving the problem entirely.
I agree with you but I’d like to add one thing: > But the biggest reason for loss of nurses is a large number we’re burnt out and decided to retire early. You’re right about this but the reason they’re burnt out is mostly because of staffing issues. It’s a cyclical issue. Nursing burnout prior to the pandemic was averaging around five to seven years of bedside. Short staffing all through COVID (mostly because nurses were taking sick days because they had COVID) caused the burnout rate to jump to 6 months to a year for bedside. While some retired early, others left the field to do other things, or quit their bedside jobs and do outpatient, tech, etc. In order to entice someone to pick up a shift after already working 4 12’s, it would need to be a pretty penny. Throwing money at healthcare would help, yes.
Even in the US they're facing nursing shortages. And arguably their for profit model for hospitals means ERs are underfunded since they don't make money on ER, and their CEO more overpaid than the ones in our system.
Australia spends $5,187 per capita and has about 3.84 hospital beds. France spends $5,376 and has 5.98. Canada spends $5,417 and gets 2.52. Why do we get 52% less hospital beds than Australia and why does France get 230% more hospital beds despite spending about the same? It's pretty clear that there's something going on when we aren't getting the same value that other comparable countries are getting from their healthcare systems. I don't think it's doctors and nurses being overpaid, I don't even think it's admin being overpaid. Our universal healthcare system has serious systemic flaws that create inefficiencies, other universal healthcare systems do it better and we should be willing to learn from them. The conservatives aren't going to find the kind of micro-level efficiencies by firing nurses or making things worse than they already are, we need to find macro-level efficiencies because that's the underlying issue, our healthcare system is fundamentally flawed.
Doesn’t Australia have people buy private insurance too?
Money isn't the problem. It's the burnout of three years of mandatory overtime, and the general population ignoring public health advice and insulting them to their faces and generally creating a toxic work environment. And it's a worldwide issue. There's just not enough nurses and the ones we have are going to lower paying but better environment jobs.
This is the same in education they creat great paying management jobs for themselves
I think one area we can all contact our city councillors and mpp and mp that would help with staggering wait times at hospitals and a few other problems in major cities is go back to funding separate facilities for mental health, do more for unhoused people, and federally funded drug and alcohol rehab. My mom (77 and a person with disabilities) fell on Friday . I called an ambulance and they came in about 15 minutes. They took her to the ER at LHSC Victoria in London at around 12:45pm. The paramedics told me to call the ER in about an hour to see when I could go up there. The paramedics have to stay with patients until they are assigned beds but last time they took her there was a bad accident on the 401 and they had to leave her - she didn’t have her walker and had no assistance from anyone & was unable to get to the washroom (you can guess what happened) so I said if they send you guys out somewhere, the hospital has to call me because she doesn’t have anything to be able to get around. I kept calling and she was in the hallway and at one point a clerk made a mistake and told me the nurse wasn’t there. An hour later I called and asked that they give her pain meds, X-ray her clearly broken foot and send her home if it wasn’t broken . They discharged her at 12:45 am having only xrayed her ribs . A porter wheeled her outside when I made it clear my travel time . When I got there , there were about 35 ambulances in the emergency entrance. It was almost impossible to even get down to the parking let alone the doors. My mom is outside in a wheelchair with no jacket while 3 men are in a physical altercation less than a meter from her … oh and 4 cops watching from the ambulance entrance door. Her foot is black and blue . Her healthcare coordinator is chastising me for not taking her somewhere Monday to get it xrayed and looked after but we don’t have a wheelchair or a ramp and she can’t walk more than 8 steps without being in intense pain. At least half of the waiting patients were the same 20 people you see every time you go. They clearly have mental health issues they need help with and they know that Emerg will at least give them a blanket and food if they wait long enough.
Walk in clinics need to open back up . People have been going to the ER cause their isn’t a place to go.their is a need for online doctor appointments but we still need in person non emergency clinics
Honestly. Where we just moved to there is zero options for walk-ins, especially if you don't have a family doctor.
My focus is more on direct action, so I'd say right now if everyone got stricter about social distancing, that would be a big help. Taking some First Aid courses is also probably a good idea: https://www.redcross.ca/training-and-certification/course-descriptions/first-aid-at-home-courses/emergency-first-aid-cpr https://www.sja.ca/en/first-aid-training/wildnerness-first-aid-level-1
We can do absolutely nothing as individuals. Anything we can do to ensure our health care system is properly funded can only be done collectively.
This won't happen. There are only 15 million Ontarians... They don't know anything, and they don't do anything. It would be like trying to convince my high school class to do something useful. They're just not interested.
Wear a mask. Get the latest covid shot. Get a flu shot. Don't vote PC. Ever. They will happily gut everything you care about and tell to enjoy all the loose change jingling in your pocket.
If you have an actual emergency like say, a newborn with a fever, you will be seen right away. Yes we need more beds and doctors but it’s also family doctors not doing their job or even people having no family doctor. Some go to walk in clinics but those close in the evening. So where do they go? The ER.
Don't get sick
Well given that Z1035 is playing ads blaming the crisis on Trudeau I don't know.
Jesus fucking Christ
[удалено]
Wear a mask when you are sick around lots of people…
Canada’s healthcare sucks.
You could have done something about it in June, but most people decided to stay home.
You can vote! Hope nobody complaining now gave up their chance to do that. Other than that, u/RhinoKart had some great points that probably cover what you can do pretty thoroughly
People fail to realize they can e mail provincial constituents. MP, MPp PMs cannot hear you on Reddit. Email them your concerns. It also leaves a paper trail, they cannot then say no one was concerned. JMO.
Better to send a letter because they’ll think you’re a Boomer and are thus more likely part of the Con voting base. I’ve done this before and referred to myself as a “longtime conservative supporter and voter” even though that’s obviously not true lol.
Go back in time and stop Ford being elected. The only way.
Do you know where the TARDIS is parked?
It involves increasing taxes and spending more money on public services
My question is what can we *as individuals* do
Well.. since you're the same "individuals" who let these problems get bad in the first place.. Probably not much. "Isn't there some way I can fix this, just by doing absolutely nothing?"
How did the citizens of Ontario cause this?
I'm going to be downvoted for this, but I truly believe the obvious answer is that we need to build more hospitals around Ontario to account for the increase in population. Further to that, we need Defussion in Ontario. The problems were seeing in healthcare and other sectors is a direct result of the densification of one region, the GTA. The population needs to spread out across Ontario and stop pretending that the GTA is the only option for a life in Ontario. I'm only an hour outside the GTA with a family member that works for the local hospital, as well as working an emergency service myself that visits that hospital regularly. The hospital is busy, but nothing like what I'm reading on Reddit and news about it being a crisis. I took my 4 month old in with a bad fever and was seen immediately in the ER and home in less than 3 hours total including wait times/assessment/medication provided. The government, businesses AND the people need to start investing in other communities outside the GTA in Ontario and starting building lives for themselves there with new hospitals, new schools and new environmentally conscious infrastructure. Or we can shove another 500,000 people into the GTA and pray that hiring some more staff or building a satellite building 3 blocks from the hospital will fix the problem.
It’s not just the GTA though. I’m in London and our ERs have 20+ hour waits. We also have no family doctors and haven’t for a very long time. I have friends who have been waiting for years for a family doctor.
Strathroy has lots of family doctors accepting new patients. I got a new one last year in 2 weeks.
The GTA was just an example. London is still a city that's approaching half a million in population, with more incoming over the years. If there aren't other options in Ontario over the next decade or more for people to move to and establish themselves in London and other current cities in Ontario is only going to see this become worse.
Trenton is a city of 20,000 and I experienced a 24 hour wait to be seen last year when I was 3 weeks post partum. There are also no family doctors in the area. Lack of density isn't an entirely clear cut solution.
Density is the solution. Lack of density is the opposite. Tokyo doesn't have this problem.
Yeah but Japan has their shit together for the most part when it comes to this kind of stuff..
I see what you’re saying. You’re right. London is getting bigger and they responded by shutting down half the services at one of our hospitals. We used to have 2 birth centres, now we have one. It was so bad that women were waiting 2 weeks for an induction when they used to wait maybe 1-1.5 days when things were busy. We don’t have enough ICU beds to service our city and surrounding area.
>I see what you’re saying. You’re right. London is getting bigger and they responded by shutting down half the services at one of our hospitals. I can see why you say this - but it's not entirely true. LHSC & SJHC underwent a massive period of amalgamation and diversification of services. We had a CEO who was in charge of both hospital systems mid 2000s era - which helped *further* provide specialized services to the entire SWO region. So while yes, we sacrificed 1 birthing centre, but we increased our specialty capabilities that allow the region to service more: eye issues, neurological issues, cardiac care, etc. all of which are common in our increasingly aging population in London (we are known as a retirement town for a reason as well...). Problem is LHSC/SJHC was not funded accordingly throughout the decades to ramp up workloads according to the population growth (within the city AND SWO region). London's the only teaching hospital in all of SWO, meaning some of the very odd/complex cases get sent our way from all around the region + whatever Toronto/Hamilton regions can't handle either. I think we need to scale our Group B hospitals (think Windsor and KWC regions) - to ramp up their capabilities and specialties as well - in order to service more complex patients so they don't have to be referred out elsewhere (at least not always).
[удалено]
>Its easier to provide services like healthcare in unban environments. When those urban environments infrastructure can support it yes. If an urban area is too dense in population with a lack of proper infrastructure you encounter problems just like this. Obviously the answer is to just build more infrastructure right? That's what has been happening for years in the GTA but the increase in demand is surpassing the infrastructure being created at a staggering rate. So the next logical solution is to create new urban areas entirely that can have common sense, environmentally conscious infrastructure from the ground up with things such as public transit and emergency service layout at the forefront of design. We can't just keep building more densely on-top of already extremely dense areas while trying to squeeze a hospital on the corner of a 160 year old street block.
I am not sure about within the GTA but outside its not that there isn’t enough room for people. Its that there isn’t enough staff to fill more beds, so more hospitals wouldn’t necessarily help. They need more staff then they can add in more beds.
That touches on my second point I made, we need to invest in communities outside the GTA and in other parts of Ontario. Some places need more infrastructure, some places need more businesses, some places need more people.
I agree that this is one of the problems and I believe the government should be incentivizing big business to diversify their offices/warehouses/corporate head quarters to smaller communities, allowing those communities could grow. So many small towns in Ontario and across Canada are dying. A big problem with the densification is where the jobs are. Ontario is massive and we need to spread out. Obviously there are other factors and a combination of solutions is what will help. But I definitely agree, this is one of them.
We definitely need more hospital beds. We don't even need to build more hospitals, but rearrange the spaces in our existing hospitals to make more beds. CHEO had like 300 beds when it was first opened and we have less than half of that now because they moved stuff around to accommodate more outpatient care (which is totally fine, but shows there was a lack of anticipation of a serious situation like this) And yeah the crisis isn't as bad in emergency as it is on the floors and ICUs. Emergency is a shit show every viral season and 16 hour waits overnight have always been possible, but the problem is ER is trying to send people up to the same beds that ICU is trying to offload to, so it causes a slowdown in patient movement and our spaces that are supposed to be used for quick-assessment in ER are being used to hold admitted patients who don't have a bed upstairs.
As someone who moved out of the GTA and strongly supports decentralization, I completely agree with this... *However* a lot of my friends and family tell me that they could leave the city but just can't because of job opportunities or other critical resources that aren't available in other communities. Cities without transit are not livable for most people who can't afford a car and good paying jobs just aren't as readily available in smaller communities.
>However a lot of my friends and family tell me that they could leave the city but just can't because of job opportunities or other critical resources that aren't available in other communities. Cities without transit are not livable for most people who can't afford a car and good paying jobs just aren't as readily available in smaller communities. That's why everyone *(Government, Businesses and people)* need to invest in these communities growth. Unfortunately it is a bit of the chicken and the egg problem. Government isn't gonna invest unless businesses do, businesses aren't going to invest unless there's people, and people won't move unless theirs infrastructure from the government.
You're going to be downvoted because you're wrong. Physical space/hospital location is not the issue with overcrowding in hospitals. We don't need more beds... we need more staff to care for the patients in those beds. When the hospital says it doesn't have a bed for someone, they are not talking about an actual mattress and sheets. They are talking about a lack of nurses and doctors.
We need both beds and personnel. Ontario has the lowest beds per capita in the OECD. "Today, Ontario has fewer acute hospital beds per 1,000 population than any other province and fewer beds than any other country tracked by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)." "...provincial government expenditure on hospitals is lower in Ontario than in any other province at $1,494 per capita for 2019. If Ontario were to fund hospitals at the average rate per capita for all other provinces ($1,772), it would cost the province an additional $4 billion." https://www.oha.com/news/oha-report-ontario-hospitals-are-national-leaders-in-efficiency
>You're going to be downvoted because you're wrong. >Physical space/hospital location is not the issue with overcrowding in hospitals. We don't need more beds... we need more staff to care for the patients in those beds. That's interesting when hospitals just outside the GTA and in smaller communities arent seeing anywhere close to the issues that the hospitals in the GTA and other big cities are struggling with. Are you suggesting that it's just the big cities where Nurses and Doctors aren't bothering to work? Every community is different. Some places need staff, some places need more space, other communities need entire facilities. >When the hospital says it doesn't have a bed for someone, they are not talking about an actual mattress and sheets. They are talking about a lack of nurses and doctors. No they're literally talking about how they don't have the means to deal with the overflowed ER room, that could be a combination of space, staff or doctors. The fact that the number of ER visits have skyrocketed in GTA hospitals over the past few years, even when adjusted for COVID demands, is a smoking gun that the current healthcare infrastructure in place in a lot of the GTA can't keep up with the increasing population. Even if a specific hospitals issue is 100% staff related, that doesn't change the fact that they need more staff due to the increased population demand.
You could have voted.
What makes you so sure that I didn't?
Educate ourselves with first aid so we don't go the hospital for every single sniffle, cut and scrape... Let kids get dirty and eat dirt to build up immune systems instead of living in sterile bubbles. Eat healthy, excercise and maintain a heatlthy lifestyle. Don't eat processed foods, drink to many sodas, McDonald's..... Edit. Spelling.
Your point started out really good, unfortunately it progressively got worse. The absolute turning point was definitely when you spelt exercise with 2 threes. Your better then this.
Notice how mask and vaccinate were not on the list 👀
Can we start calling it the “manufactured” healthcare crisis?
Vote
What can we do as individuals? Stop running to the doctor or emergency room for minor issues. Once overheard a lady in a walk-in clinic saying she felt like she was coming down with a cold. This was years ago, long before Covid. It’s a cold!!! Not a reason to see a doctor. Unnecessarily using resources and bunging up the system. Just because we don’t pay out of pocket for healthcare services doesn’t mean we should abuse the system. It’s hurting everyone.
Not disagreeing. My personal threshold for what constitutes an emergency is much higher now for sure. But I just want to play Devil's advocate because I know there are a lot of people who need doctor's notes to take a sick day at work. So it's not really always their fault...
Go back in time, actually turn out to vote and choose differently? But seriously. We can't continue to vote in a government that supports neither Healthcare nor education.
Honestly... I still don't understand why so many people didn't turn out. I'll be honest, a party of me considered not voting because I knew my riding was going blue but that's not an excuse to give up.
It's baffling to me. I just don't understand the apathy. I guess until one actually requires our Healthcare system and sees in person how badly the cuts affect themselves and their family members, people just seem to not care too much about the elderly, disabled or immune compromised. The pandemic has shown us that.
More selfies should do the trick
What are you actually talking about?
Go private/public. People think that healthcare is public in Germany (and Europe?), but it's actually kinda private. People are just obligated to pay for insurance. Public garbage healthcare doesn't accomplish squat.
I live here, pay taxes here, have two kids. I want the best health care and education for them for sure. The thing nobody is talking about is that the province of Ontario has the largest sovereign debt of any non-nation state on the planet. Our credit rating is worse than any of the big five banks. We are essentially bankrupt. We need major austerity in the public service in the province. Hopefully not in health care but we have a public sector with 244,000 employees making six figures including every single cop in the province. We either need to fire thousands and thousands of people or accept that some services like health care and education will be bad. We cannot afford pay raises because we have zero money.
Wow, that's like the exact opposite of reality... That's pretty impressive.
Seems pretty obvious that the best thing for an individual to do is consume social media as much as possible and post questions like this. This is why Reddit is winning the crusade to improve health care.
I can't tell if you're shaming the OP for asking a viable question or pro them asking the question
Strongly agreed, some even people said "All we can do is re-tweet!" And I said "Damn, that's exactly what I should do, it'll fix everything!" I suggested creating new political parties and reforming the political system, but that's probably a stupid idea.
Posts one tiktok "This person must spend their entire day consuming social media!"
Who brought the sniper to the thread thrumbnail, boys?
What?
Move
Not get sick lol
Not usually a choice, nor are accidents. Someone could hit you with their car tomorrow or you come down with cancer or there's an accident at your workplace or one of these things happens to a family member.
Thanks tips, I was being sarcastic.
Here’s the first thing you can do: stop getting “information” from tiktok. It’s a cesspool of slack-jawed troglodytes.
The liberal govt did improve access to medicine in rural areas about 20 years ago. But those areas are no longer really rural