Ontario faced with major shortfall of staffed hospital beds: study

Ontario’s healthcare workers are sounding the alarm over future staffing concerns and bed availability throughout the province.

On Wednesday, the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions and CUPE released a new research report examining the government’s plan to add 3,000 beds by 2023, calling it a plan that would only “exacerbate hallway healthcare.”

New research reveals a grim state of affairs for Ontario’s hospitals because @fordnation is stubbornly sticking to austerity & privatization when we desperately need investments in our public system: pic.twitter.com/UcKWcEvcNm

— OCHU/CUPE (@OCHU_Healthcare) September 4, 2024

Doug Allan, a senior researcher at CUPE National, says the issue stems from the province’s aging population. “We are now hitting a time where the first baby boomers are going to be turning 80 this year, and the oldest part of that demographic drives health care at a very high rate.”

Michael Hurley, the president of CUPE Ontario’s Council of Hospital Unions, estimates that at least 4,000 new healthcare workers are needed to adequately staff the Burlington, Hamilton, Milton, Oakville, and West Lincoln regions.

“This is a large number that you are short, and people experience that in different ways,” he said. “[People] get pushed out of hospitals, waiting lists, that’s how people experience it.”

Jillian Watt, CUPE’s Local 7800 president, represents the nearly 5,000 support staff at Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) and she says her members are burnt out.

“They are overworked, there is a lot of overtime, there are staff that aren’t taking breaks, and skipping lunches.” She says a lot of people are leaving the industry, and a lot of people don’t even want to bother getting into it.

Over the last two years, Ontario has hired 32,000 new nurses to try to keep up with demand, but the union says that’s still not enough.

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