LHIN, hospital need to ensure services, jobs

Not long ago the Liberal government was saying that any nurse who wants a job in Ontario would get one.

A caveat has now been added — the nurse may not be able to keep the job.

Health Minister George Smitherman said that hospitals running a leaky financial ship should not look for a bail out from the province, even if it means laying off nurses and closing beds.

Smitherman was responding to news of hospitals in over their heads in debt. For example, the Rouge Valley Health System in south-central Ontario may cut 72 nurses and close36 beds in a bid to balance its budget.

Make no mistake, our hospitals need to control costs while seeking out efficiencies to avoid having to make service cuts. It is estimated that $40.4 billion, or 48 cents of every tax dollar, goes annually to health care, a staggering figure that is expected to rise as the massive baby boomer population continues to age.

But we also need our health ministry and the Local Health Integration Networks to work hand-in-glove with hospitals to unearth savings.

Provincial funding for hospitals is slated to increase only 2.4 per cent in 2008-09, and 2.1 per cent in 2009-10. But hospital costs have been increasing much more than that, thus putting the hospitals behind the financial eight ball, forcing them to look at cuts.

Smitherman blamed the Rouge Valley situation on bad fiscal management -bully-boy tactics is how Conservative health critic Elizabeth Witmer put it. Fully 75 of Ontario's 154 public hospitals, including Quinte HealthCare, are facing deficits for 2008-09. Is Smitherman saying all these hospitals are mismanaged, too?

The cost of drugs and equipment is outpacing the projected provincial funding increases, to say nothing of staff costs rising through overtime because of the nursing shortage and provincially-negotiated pay raises for nurses over which hospitals have no control.

Ontario is divided into 14 Local Health Integration Networks and they hold the purse strings to individual hospital funding.

The South East LHIN, which funds QHC and six other hospitals in eastern Ontario, offers up an example of how work can be done in concert with hospitals to achieve balanced budgets.

LHIN officials are in constant contact with QHC officials and made the suggestion for the hospital to bring in a consultant — Murphy Walsh — to look at ways to reduce costs.

The hospital took the suggestion and officials estimate a report done by Murphy Walsh will result in $4million in savings, but it will take time to realize those savings.

The LHIN, impressed with the efforts of QHC and noting the Murphy Walsh report's recommendation will require time to reduce costs, went a step further and loaned QHC $3.6 million to cover this year's hospital deficit.

The money must be paid back, but if the LHIN, like any lender, did not have confidence in the borrower's ability to meet the commitment, the funds would not have been advanced.

The other LHINs in the province need to work with the hospitals in their jurisdictions on cost-saving initiatives to help them balance their budgets, or hospitals will have no choice but to cut services.

As things stand, with so many hospitals facing deficits, Witmer isn't far off the mark when she says Smitherman is acting like a bully on the health-care block.

Besides the possible Rouge Valley cuts, officials at Ajax and Pickering Hospital and Centenary Health Centre in Toronto said they may have to cutup to 220 jobs, including some nursing positions, over three years to balance their books.

Clearly, the province is forcing this to happen and needs to have its LHIN officials work closely with hospital officials to head off the service cuts and job losses. Failing to do that,more nurses will lose their jobs,putting a lie to the government's promise to hire more nurses.

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