Continuing the hospital funding freeze in this year’s Ontario budget will hurt patients and overcrowd hospitals even more. That’s the position of healthcare practitioners, who note this is the fourth consecutive year that the province’s hospitals will see real-dollar budget cuts.
This is the longest unbroken period of real-dollar public hospital cuts in Ontario’s history, says the Ontario Health Coalition.
In this year’s budget, healthcare funding will increase below the rate of inflation, which means real- dollar cuts, the Coalition points out.
The budget also stipulates a 0% increase for public hospitals. This means hospital funding will not keep up with inflation and hospitals will face deficits and real-dollar cuts, the organization notes.
While the budget stipulates a 2% increase for long-term care homes that will go go to nursing, personal support and programs, “there is nothing in the budget to address the needs of more than 20,000 people on wait lists for long-term care homes across the province,” says a press release of the Ontario Health Coalition.
Another health item in the budget is a 5% increase over three years for home care and community care.
“Unfortunately, there is very little that is new or transformative in this budget when it comes to health care,” says Dianne Martin, executive director of the Registered Practical Nurses Association of Ontario.
“The government has committed more than $11 billion for hospital capital grants. And while this infrastructure is badly needed, the people who will be expected to provide care in these new, state-of-the-art buildings will continue to suffer from increased workloads, stress, burnout and the moral distress associated with watching in frustration as their patients fail to get the level and quality of care they deserve—a direct result of the government continuing to hold the line on hospitals’ base operating funding,” Martin explains.