Two-tier health care: rural vs urban
It didn’t get the extensive coverage it deserved in the
big city media, but a recently-released report on the status of rural
and small town health care should be required reading for every MPP at
Queen’s Park and every senior hospital administrator in this province.
If more proof was needed that a two-tier health care
system is emerging inside Ontario, one that pits conditions found in our
largest urban centres against those of our smallest communities, then
look no further than the findings of the report prepared by the Ontario
Health Coalition.
In its bid to learn how health care cuts are affecting
the delivery of medical services to outlying towns and villages, the OHC
organized a blue chip panel of experts to conduct a series of public
hearings. Its mandate was to hear first-person accounts from those who
have fallen through the cracks of our health care system and to make
recommendations for badly-needed improvements.
Titled Toward Access and Equality: Realigning
Ontario’s Approach to Small and Rural Hospitals to Serve Public Values,
the full report can be found at
www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca
In community-after-community, from Welland in the south,
east to Cobourg, and north to New Liskeard, the panel heard a
disturbingly similar story line: deep funding cuts have seriously
curtailed the level of health care that all patients are entitled to
receive under Canada’s so-called universally-funded, public health care
system – regardless of where they happen to live.
“We heard stories of poor care practices resulting from
hospital bed cuts whereby patients are forced out of hospital too
quickly in a bid to empty a hospital bed, then spend most of their lives
in the emergency department with poor quality of life until they die,”
said Natalie Mehra, OHC executive director, in a statement following
release of the report.
The OHC report made several key recommendations,
including:
-
Dismantle Local Health Integrated Networks (LHINs);
-
Restore democratic hospital boards with increased
oversight, community accountability; and a mandate to release
financial and service planning information;
-
Minimum levels of hospital service across all parts
of Ontario;
-
Stop closure of small and rural hospitals;
-
Legislative accountability and appropriate processes
over major service changes and restructuring;
-
Increase provincial heath care funding to the
national average.
The OHC deserves full credit for organizing the 12
public hearings. More than 1,100 residents, local elected officials,
faith leaders, social service providers, and economic and agricultural
representatives attended the hearings. Almost 500 oral and written
presentations were made to the six-member, non-partisan panel.
Add it up and the OHC’s effort is a whole lot better and
extensive than the government’s own closed-door panel studying health
care services and delivery in rural and northern Ontario. Following a
series of hospital closures, the Ministry of Health last year
reluctantly agreed to establish its own panel to study the issue but, to
date, no public hearings have been organized and none are expected.
This is shameful. It shouldn’t be the responsibility of
a hard-working and dedicated but under-funded organization like the
Ontario Health Coalition to conduct public hearings. That’s the job of a
provincial government that insists it will maintain a public health care
system accessible to all.
But unless the evidence revealed by the OHC is reversed
it seems clear Ontario is headed down the road of two-tier health care:
one for big cities and another, an impoverished system, for rural
communities.
In Solidarity
Patty Rout
First Vice-President / Treasurer
