While it's better than the frozen budgets hospitals dealt with for the better part of the past decade, the 3.1 per cent hospital budget increase announced by the province last week still doesn't cut it, said Michael Hurley.
The president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU) was in Sudbury on May 3 to discuss hospital funding.
Hurley explains that operational costs for hospitals are rising at 5.3 per cent each year because of factors such as increased drug costs and pressures caused by an aging population.
That means there's actually a $350 million funding shortfall for Ontario hospitals, and $8 million at our local hospital, Health Sciences North.
“The three per cent is totally better than zero,” Hurley said. “Of course, the problem is there was a lot of hope that the budget announcement would actually be close to the real costs of the hospitals.”
The province actually increased hospital budgets more last year — by $587 million, while this year's increase amounted to $518 million.
“The level of increase is actually smaller, but they pretended there was a more generous increase,” Hurley said.
Dave Shelefontiuk, president of CUPE Local 1623, who represents about 1,200 hospital workers at Health Sciences North, including porters, housekeepers and clerks, joined Hurley at the media conference.
He said the ranks of his union have been reduced by about 30 people over the past couple of years through attrition thanks to Health Sciences North's budget crunch.
At the same time, the hospital has been anywhere from 10 to 20 per cent over-capacity for about the last 18 months, meaning patients sometimes receive care in hallways.
“There's been a reduction of front-line staff, and at the same time, you have an increased workload,” Shelefontiuk said.
“The staff aren't able to fully do their total job descriptions that they're supposed to be doing every day.”
Like Hurley, Shelefontiuk said he's not impressed with last week's budget announcement, saying hospital funding has to increase by another two or 2.5 per cent to provide proper services.
Sudbury.com reached out to Health Sciences North for comment, and received the following email statement.
“Our employees, physicians, and managers are working very hard and doing a great job of providing patients with the care they need under very challenging circumstances,” the statement said.
“We are encouraged that the latest provincial budget contains an increase in operating funding to help hospitals deal with issues such as wait times and overcapacity, and we’re looking forward to finding out what that will mean for HSN.”
Meanwhile, OCHU is planning a rally in Greater Sudbury for June 8 to draw people's attention to the issue of hospital funding. It's one of several being planned across the province for 2017.
