Hospital union members made a statement outside Barrie’s hospital Tuesday in an effort to bring to light what they say is a crisis in the province’s health-care system.
A small group of protesters stood in front of a lineup of hospital stretchers on the side of the street at Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH) as a symbol of their concerns.
“Health care has lost some prominence in this provincial election,” Michael Hurley, president of CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU-CUPE), said while standing in the cold under an RVH sign.
“We want to try to remind people about the fact that the stretchers represent the 2,000 people that are on stretchers in hospitals like this one, on any given day, or the quarter-of-a-million people who are on wait list for surgeries, many of whom, you know, are waiting beyond their medically recommended time-limits for surgery,” he added.
Hurley also expressed concern for what he said is 50,000 people waiting for long-term care beds or 2.5 million people who don't have a family doctor.
“These issues are huge for anybody who's affected — anybody with cancer, anybody with a family member who's struggling in the health-care system, and we don't want those issues to get lost in this election, because we need some solutions,” he said.
Hurley says Ontario spends the least of any province in the country on health care and hospitals.
“We need to invest, because we have a population that's aging and it's grown in size and the funding has not kept pace,” he added.
The union says there are 1,860 people on stretchers in hospital hallways, up from 826 in June 2018 “when the premier promised to end hallway medicine.”
Other health-care issues they say are a problem are palliative home-care patients dying without painkillers and medical supplies, as well as “constant” emergency room closures in small towns in Ontario.
“We're just trying to talk up the issue and hope that health care starts to rise,” Hurley said.