News from the Ontario Government
(A Note from Niagara At Large – This post includes a counterpoint, inserted at the bottom from Ontario’s New Deomcratic Party.)
Queen’s Park, Toronto, July 20th, 2015 – Ontario is investing more than $7 million in small hospitals, including many rural hospitals, to improve patient care close to home.
The ongoing campaign to keep hospital-based health care in Ontario alive.
This funding will help more than 50 hospitals across Ontario improve care for patients through measures such as:
- Reducing wait times
- Providing staff with additional clinical education
- Expanding programs in partnership with community organizations.
Today, Dr. Eric Hoskins, Minister of Health and Long-Term Care, was at the Campbellford Memorial Hospital in Northumberland County to announce this funding. The minister also marked the upcoming opening of the new Hastings Field House, which, beginning August 30th, will offer a six-month program for people with vascular disease, including those who have suffered a heart attack or stroke. The Cardiovascular Rehabilitation and Secondary Prevention will include education, self-management training and exercise for people with vascular disease.
Investing in small hospitals across Ontario is part of the government’s plan to build a better Ontario through its Patients First: Action Plan for Health Care, which provides patients with faster access to the right care; better home and community care; the information they need to live healthy; and a health care system that is sustainable for generations to come.
QUOTES
“Hospitals play a particularly important role in small communities, as providers of care, as employers and as corporate citizens. This additional funding will ensure that local hospitals can continue to put patients first by enabling access to care that is close to home.”
― Dr. Eric Hoskins, Minister of Health and Long-Term Care
“While touring rural communities across Ontario, I’ve heard from municipal leaders, healthcare advocates and community members that investing in hospitals is a top priority. Our government is committed to continuing to build One Ontario, ensuring our hospitals have the capacity to deliver high quality care to patients regardless of where they live.”― Jeff Leal, Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs
“This funding announcement today continues to confirm the importance of Campbellford Memorial Hospital (CMH) to the patients and their families who use this hospital every day. Rural health care is a key priority for our Government and I am pleased to see CMH receiving funds that help them deliver services right here in Trent Hills.”
― Lou Rinaldi, MPP, Northumberland-Quinte West
“At Campbellford Memorial Hospital, we strive to be a recognized leader in rural health care. As a rural health hub, we are creating new opportunities to collaborate with our community partners to enhance quality of care and improve access to the growing community we serve together. We value and appreciate this additional funding from the Ministry of Health and Long-term Care as it could be used to reduce wait times for arthroscopic procedures, enhance care by providing staff with additional clinical education, and expand the integrated palliative care program in partnership with community organizations,” Brad Hilker, President and CEO, Campbellford Memorial Hospital.
― Brad Hilker, President and CEO, Campbellford Memorial Hospital
QUICK FACTS
- Fifty-six small hospitals in Ontario will receive an increase to their base funding.
- Ontario has also created a Small and Rural Hospital Transformation Fund, which fosters innovation and encourages collaboration among small and rural hospital and community care providers, so they can operate as integrated networks.
LEARN MORE
- Patients First: Action Plan for Health Care
- Campbellford Memorial Hospital
- New Regional Cardiovascular Rehabilitation and Secondary Prevention Services to open in Trent Hills
A Response To Liberal Government’s Hospital Funding Annoucement from Ontario’s New Democratic Party
July 20th, 2015 – Today, Ontario NDP Health Critic France Gélinas, MPP for Nickel Belt, released the following statement:
“The Liberals are re-announcing old news in a desperate attempt to distract from their cuts to health care and the selloff of Hydro One. More photo-ops won’t fool anyone who has to wait for the care they need. Patients and families know that Kathleen Wynne and the Liberals are forcing hospitals across Ontario to cut frontline staff. That means longer wait times for patients and even more cuts to local hospitals.
“Small hospitals have received this one percent increase in base funding in each of the past two years, while larger hospitals’ budgets have been frozen for four straight years. Nothing has changed in today’s announcement. Every hospital in Ontario will continue to feel the squeeze, including the cost of rising hydro bills. Even Liberal MPP Lou Rinaldi, who joined Minister Hoskins today, admits that his own local hospital has “been cut to the bone. We can’t do it any more.”
“To meet the needs of our growing families and aging grandparents, we need to stop these Liberal cuts to our hospitals. New Democrats will continue working to build a public health care system that meets the needs of every patient, reduces wait times, and protects the frontline care that families count on.”
(Niagara At Large invites you to share your views on this post. Please know that NAL only posts views or comments from individuals who also share their real first and last name.)
Niagara At Large 
Yeah!
Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network
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I was reading this article thinking “it’s about time”, and then … the penny dropped … it dawned on me … They said MILLION not BILLION. Incredible!!!
$7 Million? $7 bloody Million? Spread over “more than 50 hospitals”?
You’ve got to be kidding!!!
That’s just under $140,000 per hospital!
You can’t even hire a decent bureaucrat for that, let alone a doctor.
And this deserves a news alert?
Too put this in context –
$7 Million will just get you 7 small bungalows in Toronto.
$7 Million will barely get you 7 to 10 miles of 2 lane highway paved.
So are we expected to jump for joy with gratitude?
After spending more than $2.5 BILLION on 4 weeks of bloody games?
Do they think we are that stupid?
* * * * *
$7 Billion – with a “B” – now THAT would be news.
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Ontario NDP Health Critic France Gélinas, MPP for Nickel Belt, It has been disclosed this Federal Government has began the cut ($36 billion dollars over the next 5 years) to Provincial Health Care transfer Funding and it will be almost impossible for our Universal Health Care to survive. This was part of the National Citizen Coalition founding platform and an organization that HARPER supported and was actually an Executive Director of prior to taking over the reins of the Reform Party.
There is much history involving HARPER and COLIN BROWN the architect and founder of the NATIONAL CITIZENS COALITION….an organization formed by BROWN after failing to stop the implementation of our Health Accord…Also as part of the associations agenda was the “ELIMINATION” op the Canadian Wheat Board which HARPER managed in the past few years…IN FACT the Western Farmers attempted to re-establish the board and their bid to purchase it was refused by HARPER and it was sold to AMERICAN Interests.
NOW this so called government IS LITERALLY BUYING THE NEXT ELECTION WITH YOURS and MY TAX DOLLARS….
GOD HELP CANADA if they succeed and GOD help we who are fighting these goons
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Chris — you’ve nailed it. This is another example of the disgusting cynicism of the Ontario Liberal government. Eric Hoskins should be ashamed of himself. Read the media release carefully—what the Liberals plan to do is to continue to download healthcare onto “community partners”. And just who ARE those “community partners”? Not the CCAC, that’s for sure, since we know that home care in Ontario is broken beyond repair. Not Long Term Care, because the provincial government has gone out of the business of building LTC homes. Not Community Health Centres — there have been no new ones in years. Not Family Health Teams — our Welland FHT was the last one to be funded. And please note that the salary dispute with Ontario’s doctors has yet to be settled, and, as far as I know, nobody has asked them whether they are prepared to shoulder the extra burden that the MOHLTC and certain highly-paid bureaucrats bureaucrats intend to place on them…Look how well that has played out in the UK (sarcasm intended)! This is bullshit of the highest order.
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Yes, you are right Chris……but even if it was Billions, it would not help south Niagara, as they are considered a large hospital system…the NHS, which has it’s Big Acute In-patient Hospital in the far northwest section of the Niagara region it serves. Therefore, Port Colborne’s small rural hospital is considered non-essential and many people in that city and surrounding area will travel nearly an hour to get service in St.Catharines, as the hospital in Welland will also close down. It’s a crafty game the NHS, LHIN and MOHLTC have devised.
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I must agree with the others who have posted. A stretcher….not a bed….costs about $20,000, a cardiac monitor even more. Oh, goodie, perhaps a few hospitals can buy a new ER stretcher. The wait time will surely be slashed. RIDICULOUS!!! Yet people fall for it.
The federal government, particularly the evil Harper minions, have been trying to sink the ship of Universal Health Care from day one by cutting funds and services. I would bet the farm that US interests, insurance companies, have been strongly lobbying (read that GREASING THE PALMS) of our “honourable” politicians to intentionally destroy our single payer system and establish a US style FOR PROFIT system to get their greedy hands on exorbitant profits at the expense if the sick. How heartless and DESPICABLE can anyone be? Anyone who profits from the suffering of others is the lowest of the low. Need anyone say more? Those same insurance companies flooded Canada and Canadians with all kinds of propaganda and lies back when Tommy Douglas first proposed it. THANK GOD it didn’t work then. How can we conceivably let it work now?
Why on earth would Canadians wish to discontinue universal health care….you know, that social programme we voted overwhelmingly as our most cherished social asset! Canada is not the only victim., American bureaucrats (should be spelled burrocrats) will never be satisfied until they destroy health care around the world all for greed. Canada’s is not the only system they are working on.
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The road to Privatization of Our Universal Health Care System was ratcheted into full steam ahead by the Conservative Mike Harris regime (many of which joined Harper on the Federal Scene) and carried further by the Liberal McGuinty puppets…Harris is a fellow of the Fraser Institute and has authored under their guidance,…
CBC once made a documentary aired on the Fifth Estate called “the Corporations” that spoke of the Fraser Institute’s agenda built around total privatization of “ALL” social program and institutions. The, since Harris, Ontario Liberal governments were elected and re-elected not on their guardianship of the public purse but on dread of the platforms put forth by the opposition Conservatives. this was even more evident during the Last Ontario Election.
When I hear or read any Conservative bash the Ontario Liberal Government it sends alarms as well as dismay flashing through my mind for I feel they care just as little about the blue collared, the elderly and the disabled as the robber barons in power do. No I do not carry an NDP card but from what I see the Liberals and Conservatives are nothing more than “Corporate” expansion Parties catering to the money men with little concern for the rights and welfare of the little people.
We have an almost complete “LACK” of honesty, integrity as well as absolutely NO Transparency from Corporate Parties.
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