the conversation
Emergency Response Alison Motluk’s investigation into hospital overcrowding provoked much finger pointing (Andrea Horwath grilled Kathleen Wynne about it at Queen’s Park during Question Period), and also provoked candid debate about the root of the problem and how to fix it: “A focus on government ‘inefficiencies’ has forced hospital administrators to aim for roughly the same bed occupancy rates as that of Toronto’s homeless shelters—and we can see how that’s worked out. Rather than impose such slim margins of error, we should do as the private sector does: aim for overproduction. Corporate shareholders understand that it’s better to produce too many widgets than not enough. Ontario’s shareholders—the taxpayers—have even more reason to do so. After all, when demand outstrips supply, the result is more than just some unhappy customers. The result is dead customers.” —Jeremy Greenberg, Toronto “Ontario cannot keep adding condo developments to the city of Toronto and not expect a health care crisis! More condos and more people necessitate more hospitals! The politicians need to make the developers more accountable!” —Tina Edwards, Thornbury 16 toronto life July 2018
“As a Toronto and Hamilton area emergency physician, I was unsurprised at the stories in ‘Hallway Health Care.’ This is my life. Emergency medical staff are the MacGyvers of the health care system, constantly being asked to do more with less. The number of in-patient beds is cut? The emerg will deal with it. Family doctors are overtaxed? The emerg will deal with it. No shelter beds on a cold night? The emerg will deal with it. It was, ironically, a flood in the ER, during which all the in-patients had to be moved out of the department, that showed me how efficiently emergency docs and nurses can work when we are able to take care of just emergency patients and not in-patients as well. “I used to be proud of our health care system. Now it seems adrift, and politicians consider it political suicide to have frank conversations about how to fix it. Isn’t it time that, as a society, we have those difficult discussions? We are quickly running out of options to fund a system where everyone has rights but no one wants to pay for those rights. I’m no economist. I’m just a lowly front-line health worker. And despite everything, I truly love my job. Until I hear other wise, I will keep a smile on my face and continue to try to navigate a confusing system to the best
of my abilities so that my patients can get the care they need.” —John Sollazzo, St. Joseph’s Healthcare The vast majority of responses came in the form of readers sharing their own hospital horror stories: “Several years ago, my motherin-law fell and broke her elbow. Although she was treated at the hospital where she had been a nurse for years until retirement, the so-called fracture clinic was ‘closed’ for a week while they dealt with an ‘insect problem.’ As a result, her elbow never healed and her arm is now useless.” —Lou-Anne Balodis, Georgetown “My grandfather shattered his knee and was admitted in Toronto. Immediately we drove down from Hamilton to see him. We got there, and they told us he’d left and showed us some forms that ‘he signed’ as he was discharged. Meanwhile, he was texting saying he was still there and that he could not walk. I called 911 and the police came and found him in a back hallway on a stretcher. He was left there and forgotten about. We brought him back to Hamilton and went to the General here. He was in surgery the next day.” —starscr3amsgh0st, Reddit
