It will be days or even weeks before the administration at Health Sciences North learns if the hospital will be receiving any of the $90 million in new surge funding announced Wednesday by the Progressive Conservative government of Premier Doug Ford.
Ford and Health Minister Christine Elliott announced the province will invest that money to create more than 640 new beds and spaces, and continue operating beds and spaces already open in the hospital and community sectors. The surge funding is to help hospitals deal with an expected patient influx when flu season hits.
The Tories also said Ontario “is moving forward” with building 6,000 new long-term care beds of the 15,000 such beds it has committed to building in the next five years.
Dominic Giroux, president and chief executive officer of Health Sciences North, said any investment of funds is much needed and the timing of the funding announcement is vital. It’s important for HSN to receive confirmation of additional surge beds in early October so it can prepare to open those additional beds when the flu season strikes in three months, he said.
HSN administrators have already been working on “space reconfigurations”, preparing for the possibility surge beds will be added. Those beds offer a short-term solution to over-capacity at HSN. Hospital officials are working on what Giroux called a medium-term solution, which is to add more beds by December 2019. In the long term, HSN is developing a new capital master plan to address the need for beds in the coming decades.
HSN and other Ontario hospitals received the first installation of surge bed funding last year, said Giroux, and that funding has become annualized, meaning it has been added to the hospital’s operational budget. Last year’s surge funding allowed for the addition of 12 new beds over the previous year, bringing the total number of beds at HSN to 469.
Ford and Elliott made the announcement about surge funding at the inaugural meeting of the Premier's Council on Improving Healthcare and Ending Hallway Medicine. Led by Dr. Rueben Devlin, the council will recommend strategic priorities and actions to improve Ontario's health outcomes and improve patient satisfaction, while making Ontario's health care system more efficient, the Tories said in a news release.
"One patient treated in a hallway is one patient too many. It's unacceptable that people are still waiting hours before seeing a doctor, or are forced to lie on stretchers in hospital hallways when they do finally get care," said Ford.
"Patients are frustrated, families are frustrated, and doctors and nurses are frustrated. We told the people of Ontario we'd make our hospitals run better and more efficiently, and we'd get them the care they deserve. Today, we're keeping that promise."
While there has not been any commitment to funding for Health Sciences North in Sudbury, North Bay will be receiving funding for 26 beds - a 14-bed transitional care unit at North Bay Regional Health Centre, 10 beds for at-risk older adults and four short-term stay beds in partnership with the Alzheimer’s Society of North Bay. Funding will also be used for 12 spaces in a specialized day program with the Alzheimer’s Society of North Bay.
Elliott said hallway medicine, the practice of placing patients on stretchers in hospital hallways, television and shower rooms, and other spaces is a multi-faceted problem that requires innovative solutions.
The Progressive Conservative government will continue to listen to front-line employees about how to develop a long-term “transformational strategy” to address hallway health care, said Elliott.
Nickel Belt MPP France Gelinas is the NDP party’s health critic. The wording of the Progressive Conservatives’ funding announcement concerns her, she said.
More than half of Ontario hospitals operate at over-capacity and are placing patients in any available space to accommodate them. In Sudbury, patients are often placed in hallways, in television rooms and in corners of hospital floors, blocked off only by small curtains.
“That’s sort of weird,” Gelinas said about the use of the words “beds and spaces” in the Tory announcement.
She points out the money is designed to address the increased need for beds during flu season.
“Those are not ongoing beds,” she said. “This is not money that the hospital can count on that will keep coming.”
She called Wednesday’s announcement “a very small Band-aid” to address the problem of bed shortages in Ontario.
Carol Mulligan is an award-winning reporter and one of Greater Sudbury’s most experienced journalists.
