Unionized hospital workers in Sudbury joined provincial union leaders in lining up hospital stretchers outside Health Sciences North Wednesday to symbolize the problem of hallway medicine in Ontario, where some patients who cannot get a hospital bed are left on stretchers in hospital hallways.
Michael Hurley, president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions/CUPE said the union is running a parallel campaign during the provincial election to raise awareness there is overcrowding in Ontario hospitals.
"We brought some hospital stretchers with us, you know, to symbolize the fact that we have 2,000 people in Ontario on these stretchers on any given day for whom there is no bed, waiting sometimes two and three days for placement,” Hurley said. “And Sudbury is, you know, one of the worst locations because of the extent of the overcrowding.”
CUPE researcher Doug Allan of Toronto said the ER wait time to get a hospital bed at Health Sciences North (HSN)in Sudbury is particularly bad.
"What we have across the province, we have a 20-hour wait. That's almost three times as long as the target time of eight hours,” he said. “But here at HSN , it's 27.3 hours, 27.3 hours to wait to be admitted. And at North Bay, it's 30.7 hours."
He said the problem is not because of any particular hospital, but because of a shortage of staff across the province.
"The hospitals are doing what they can with the resources they have, with the staff they have, which is terribly short," said Allan.
In the first half of 2024-25, Sudbury Health Sciences North operated at 91.7-per-cent capacity, well above the 85-per-cent recommended maximum bed occupancy level, said Allan.
According to an analysis by OCHU/CUPE, HSN needs to add 47 beds to achieve safe occupancy levels. The OCHU/CUPE news release said there is a funding shortfall of $22 million at HSN and $800 million for hospitals across Ontario.
Hurley said the current campaign is traveling across the province to raise awareness of the concern and the need to dedicate more funding to hospital care.
"So we're trying to draw attention to the crisis in health care, and trying to see if we can encourage the leaders of all of the parties to make commitments about, you know, money," said Hurley.
"Money is central. It's not the only thing that will solve it, but money is central to the problem of meeting the additional capacity needs in terms of staff and in terms of beds, you know, in hospitals and long term care," he added.
Hurley added more than two million Ontario residents are without a primary care provider; meaning no family doctor or nurse practitioner. He said although the Ford government has pledged additional funding to the Primary Care Action Plan over a four year period, it means by the time that goal is met, Ontario's population growth will still mean more than two million residents without a family doctor.
Len Gillis covers health care and mining for Sudbury.com.