HEAVY CUTS

Province's health cuts take heavy toll
Toronto Star, January 2, 1999

We hope 1999 is happier for health, but 1998's final months do not bode well. Consider:

Crowded emergency wards - only too common now - were turning away patients over Christmas.

Toronto's neo-natal facilities hit their limit - women needing special care were driven or flown to Kingston and Windsor.

Doctors at Princess Margaret Hospital decided cancer care delays were intolerable and made plans to send 500 patients to Buffalo for treatment.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines, starved for operating cash, had eight-month lineups for patients in medical need.

An inquest was being held into Toronto's neurological care - a Scarborough woman had died after being driven to Hamilton past Toronto's finest but fullest.

Crowded emergency wards. Neo-natal facilities at their limit. Neurological care unavailable. Intolerable waits for cancer care. Eight-month waits for MRI scans.

Is there anyone who doesn't fear our health system isn't what it used to be, or should be?

Clearly many factors are in play here.

The flu. Long holiday weekends. Clinics closed, doctors and nurses juggling days off. More babies needing care. More cancer.

But when all the excuses are added in, it's inescapable that what we're really watching is the accumulating impact of the Mike Harris government's first decisions when it came to power and its failure to fix them since.

In brief, dollar-driven policies from on high are exacerbating the demographic and seasonal problems surging into the health system from below.

The first decision was to slash $800 million from hospitals.

The second was just as damaging. The government cancelled or deferred projects already underway - for example, cancer facilities in Durham and Peel. (These would now be in use had they been allowed to go ahead).

Some $154 million was ``reinvested'' in the name of ``restructuring.'' But this didn't improve health care - it hurt. The money provided buy-out packages to get rid of badly needed nurses.

Harris did promise to spend every nickel ``saved'' by restructuring. He claims, moreover, that his government is spending more on health than any previous government.

Even if this is true - and it is hard to tell when the best private sector accountants admit that they can't figure out the government's books - it is clear that what was saved isn't going back to where it was cut.

And that is a key factor pushing Toronto hospitals to their limits. Last June, Liberal health critic, Gerard Kennedy, toted up government cuts and spending promises. The Toronto cuts at that point totalled $280 million, heading for $1.5 billion by 2006. The 905 region beyond Toronto is to get $2 billion by then, which it no doubt needs.

But where are the problems accumulating now on emergency wards, neurological care, neo-natal care? No surprise: Toronto.

Meanwhile, what is the government doing? It's flying patients around, paying overtime to nurses, funding temporary beds and renting buses so the premier can hand-deliver late cheques.

Is this common sense?

What are the savings in paying overtime to nurses after cancelling cancer care facilities and cutting nurses' jobs?

What are the savings in hiring planes to fly patients from hospital to hospital instead of providing enough beds in the first place?

What is the sense of promising money for emergency wards in April, renting a bus to deliver cheques in October - then imposing such time-consuming, staff-wasting conditions that hospital administrators are beginning to ask whether the money is worth the bother? And still the beds aren't there.

These are not actions that instil confidence. Rather they raise concerns that we are simply watching a government intent on putting out fires and holding onto the fire hose for dear life.