hospital bedsA new report on the provincial health system, released in North Bay on Wednesday, says hospital cutbacks and privatization are having a much more dramatic impact in the north, compared to southern Ontario.

The Ontario Council of Hospital Unions co-authored the report that chronicles the experiences of hundreds of patients from over 30 Ontario communities.  

The report says although citizens in northern Ontario have higher rates of cancers, chronic medical conditions such as diabetes and worse mental health and addictions outcomes than the rest of the province, northern Ontario hospital cutbacks and privatization mean “that the impact is far more dramatic, even than it is in southern Ontario,”

It goes on to say for nearly two decades Ontario’s provincial government has aggressively downsized hospitals, cutting 19,000 beds and reducing access to in-hospital restorative care and rehabilitation therapies, under the guise of shifting care from hospitals to “outpatient” services in the “community”.

In a release, Michael Hurley president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU) talked about hotline callers being blunt, this “transformation has amounted to a personal tragedy for their families, with loss of life, mobility, independence all chronicled due to lack of access to acute hospital care”

The report offers recommendations to the province.

Some include funding hospitals adequately, stopping the closure of acute care beds and stopping the privatization of hospital surgeries and clinical services.