August 18th, 2022
August 18th, 2022
QUEEN’S PARK — Ontario NDP Health critic France Gélinas released the following statement in response to the government’s scheme to send surgeries to for-profit private clinics and force alternate level of care patients waiting in hospitals to move to long-term care homes far from home, without their consent:
“It’s cruel to force frail elderly people waiting in hospitals to move to long-term care beds far from home without their consent. Tearing seniors away from their spouse, their essential caregivers, their grandchildren, and everything that's familiar to them, will only hurt people, not help.
Emptying furniture doesn’t free up doctors or nurses, who rarely need to provide care for alternate level of care patients.
And sending surgeries to for-profit private clinics will make the health care staffing crisis even worse as doctors and nurses will be forced to spend more hours in for-profit private clinics than hospitals. You’ll get the same surgical team in a for-profit private clinic, but you’ll get a big bill for everything from a consult with a nutritionist to upgraded cataract lenses.
Doug Ford’s scheme doesn’t do anything to keep our hospital ERs open this weekend — it doesn’t hire a single doctor, or retain a single nurse. It doesn’t free up nurses, it does the opposite.
To fix the staffing crisis in health care, we need to hire more health care professionals. The government should scrap this scheme and instead launch a plan to recruit, retain and return nurses with better pay, better working conditions and the respect they deserve.”