The Rouge Valley Health System plans to
cut more than 60 beds critical to core hospital services
despite promises not to touch essential services.
The Ontario Public Service Employees
Union has obtained documents that indicate the cuts will
apply to 11 surgery beds, 12 cardiology beds, 14 complex
continuing care and rehab beds, three women’s beds,
three Medicine beds and a pediatric bed. This is in
addition to the 20 mental health beds that are being cut
at the Ajax-Pickering hospital.
The hospital has already begun layoffs
at the two hospitals, offering severance packages to
some of the same professions they hope to lure back to
establish 15 new medical/psychiatric beds and 5
psychiatric intensive care beds at Centenary. A new
nine-beds mental health unit under construction at
Ajax-Pickering will now be converted to eight medicine
beds.
Ajax-Pickering is expected to lose 60
staff, while Centenary will cut another 160, including
union, non-union and management personnel. Together the
cuts represent about 7.5 per cent of all staff at the
two-hospital health facility.
“This is a gutting of hospital services
for the communities of West Durham and Scarborough,”
said Warren (Smokey) Thomas, President of the Ontario
Public Service Employees Union. “We were promised
efficiencies; instead we are seeing critical cuts to
core services. This doesn’t solve a problem – it merely
pushes it off to somewhere else in the health system.”
OPSEU is skeptical of the hospital’s
claims that it can maintain the same volume of service
without the beds and the staff for them.
While the hospital slashes beds and
staff, more than $8 million has been allocated for
restructuring costs in the operating plan.
In February CEO Rik Ganderton told the
media that “there is no plan to affect the patients.
We’re going to maintain surgical volumes, patient
volumes.”
OPSEU is calling on the Minister of
Health to suspend the cuts and appoint a supervisor to
manage the debt-ridden hospital.
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