Originally Posted by beausud hmmm, thats odd... can you give us more info on this? thx.
This article was written July 26/04. I tried to find a more recent article but got fed up. What has happened since is that the government is only going to give WOHC $3 million dollars which puts them in an even worse situation. The more recent article is specific about who is about to be fired (Nurses and Housekeeping staff) and over what period of time - 2 years.
Add to this the fact that WOHC is continuing to build it's fourth hospital at a cost of over $535 million dollars.
And the largest hospital in the group and the new hospital - both in Brampton - are in Peel County. Mississauga where I live is in Peel County and is the largest and richest city in the county with 1.5 million+ people. Mississauga sends a lot of money to pay for those 2 facilities and we want our money to stay in Mississauga so there is a vote coming to make Mississauga independent of "Peel County" which will screw WOHC even more. Don't get me started on the salaries that were printed in the papers about the CEO and other top level management at WOHC will continue to get while the Nurses are out of jobs and the community suffers more bed closures!
Eilleen.
WOHC will chop 400 jobs to trim its deficit Must cut $27 M from budget SABRINA DIVELL, Staff Writer
Brampton's hospital will suffer if the province green lights a deficit recovery plan that will cut 400 full-time staff and close acute care beds.
Not being able to give specific details to what the 150-plus page recovery plan contains, Dr. Ian Smith, William Osler Health Centre's (WOHC) chief of staff and co-chair for the recovery task force, said the impact will worsen the "decrepit state" the organization's three hospital campuses are already in.
Directions handed down by the Ministry of Health to eliminate WOHC's $27 million deficit have resulted in the task force of doctors and senior management making some very difficult choices that Smith describes as going against "everything you believe in as a doctor."
If the ministry approves the plan it would mean:
* 400 full time jobs cut. Smith said the impact would include front-line medical staff like nurses;
* a reduction in the number of acute care beds across WOHC's three hospitals including Brampton's new hospital which will open in stages rather than as a fully functioning hospital as planned;
* an increased patient backlog in all areas of the hospital as services are downgraded and consolidated. For an example, pregnant mothers could be put into a lottery to decide who would be allowed to deliver their baby at one of WOHC's three hospitals.
On top of these looming problems, Smith said WOHC is currently in a hiring freeze, which is hindering recruitment efforts for specialists to staff Brampton's new hospital.
"We are not going to act upon any of this until we have written authority (from the Ministry of Health) ... either (it) gives us the money or tells us what to do (implement or make changes to the recovery plan)."
Smith said there have been too many mixed messages, including the confusion and public uproar over the now-abandoned idea of closing Georgetown's obstetrics and pediatric unit-- a decision WOHC thought was consistent with the ministry's deficit reduction orders.
The recovery plan's proposed cuts have to achieve the ministry's defined "clinical and operational efficiencies," said Smith, which is directly translated to mean "beds and staff."
At the same time, all of this is taking place during a period when WOHC is financially unstable.
"When the three hospitals were amalgamated, they had very little cash," said Smith. "We started running deficits from day one and it has grown year after year."
At the end of the 2003/2004 fiscal year, the Ministry of Health forced hospitals to sign off on a recovery plan to eliminate their deficits or face being cut off from government funding.
WOHC's current financial troubles include:
* a cash deficit where it owes money to the bank and to the government. Smith said at certain periods during the year if the hospital can't borrow enough money it would actually have trouble covering payroll. "We have to go cap in hand to the government asking it to tell the bank it will cover us through that shortfall, so that's in addition to what we normally borrow from the bank";
* the $27 million recovery plan is based on the deficit WOHC would accumulate in 2004 to 2005 if there were no increases in costs and it did business the exact same way it has over the last couple of years. Smith said what isn't included in the $27 million is expected union contract increases this year, rising drug costs and higher expenses for medical surgical supplies;
* what government funding WOHC receives as an organization that operates three acute care hospitals is equivalent to only one acute care hospital in Ontario.
Big financial problem
"We have a big financial problem," Smith said bluntly. "What we did with the recovery plan was go on a service by service, program by program, basis and try to figure out how we could get to the $27 million figure."
However, the taskforce questions how to cut more than 10 per cent of it's already strained $300 million operating budget without impacting patient care.
"That's impossible," said Smith. "The ministry doesn't want to hear that anything negative is happening in terms of patient care."
But when if you start cutting patient access, increasing waiting times, or not performing different services as much as you were before, "those are all patient care areas, I don't care how you twist the words," he added.
Joseph Fairbrother, corporate chief, department of diagnostic imaging, and a member of the task force, said, "the impact of this plan will be very dramatic, the impact will be very real."
"We are very much aware of the concerns of staff because this is clearly an anxiety-provoking event for them, that is why we have written to the ministry presenting the recovery plan and asking them for the written direction on implementation." Fairbrother said the longer WOHC has to wait, the more adverse effect it will have on the staff. However nobody knows exactly what part of the recovery plan will become the future reality for the hospital organization.
hey
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