"Extreme Overcrowding"

Bad news from Ontario's fiscal discomfiture with its nasty deficit threatening to withhold funding from the province's hospitals. And hospital administrators already feeling themselves between a rock and a hard place - to offer the public services they require with current funding levels, hoping to receive something in excess of a 2% funding increase - are collectively wincing.

There are enough people who complain that the health care system in the province is not even close to matching their elected standards. On the other hand, there are more than enough on the other end of the scale who profess themselves satisfied with the level of care they receive in that same system. It's just that none of us would like to see any slippage occur.

Bad enough when hospitals were merged, and we lost a lot of beds and operating time in that unfortunate finance-deliberated squeeze. Tighter budgets all around, and more inventive use of what was available. Resulting in overworked nursing staff, low morale, inadequate hygiene practises within hospitals with less cleaning staff, and not enough surgical times.

Now the results of a planning exercise, described by Dr. Robert Cushman, chief executive of the Champlain LHIN has hospital administrators reeling with its results undertaken to "describe how shocking it would be and what the domino effect would be", should area hospitals proceed with cuts without peer consultation to avoid deleterious impacts on the entire system.

"The whole message was, 'We're in this together, and you have to plan together", explained Dr. Cushman. The results of the documents saw the Queensway Carleton Hospital projecting a $7.7-million deficit on a $151-million budget which would mean eliminating 17 beds and 500 blocks of operating-room time.

While the Ottawa Hospital, the region's largest, would need to close six to eight operating rooms to make up for a $43-million funding short-fall along with the related loss of 100 beds. In a system already struggling to accommodate patients, where many are even now placed in beds temporarily set up in hospital corridors.

The wait time for elective and urgent surgeries would inevitably swell to impossible, impacting further on peoples' waning health conditions. Ontario's projected $24.7-billion deficit will mitigate against fully funding hospitals to the extent that might be anticipated under normal circumstances.

The unfortunate truth is roughly 43% of the Ontario budget is already dedicated to health concerns. With a rash of industrial-production losses over the last few years, and a rising level of provincial unemployment figures resulting in lower tax revenues in an strained economy, hospitals will bless their good fortune if their hoped-for 2% funding increase materializes.

But even with that funding increase The Ottawa Hospital faces a shortfall of between $20- to $25-million. Hard times in a precarious economy impacting on a fragile health system.