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Hallway Medicine. Endless Wait Times. Overworked Staff. Ontario’s Healthcare System is Facing It’s ‘Worst Crisis’ Ever.
Posted: February 7, 2025
(February 6, 2025) By: Rumneek Johal, PressProgress
‘Healthcare in Ontario has never been in such disarray’, experts say
Healthcare advocates and labour unions in Ontario say “years of underfunding” have left Ontario’s healthcare system in critical condition.
Despite Doug Ford’s promise to “end hallway medicine” in 2018, Ontario’s council of hospital unions says there has been a 125% increase in patients on stretchers since then, creating a system which is unable to meet the demands of the population at virtually every measure.
“There’s two and a half million people who don’t have a family doctor, there’s a quarter of a million people on waiting lists for surgeries and there’s 50,000 people waiting for long-term care beds,” Michael Hurley, president of CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU-CUPE) told PressProgress.
“There’s 2,000 people now, up from 850 on stretchers because we don’t have enough hospital beds.”
When it comes to funding, Hurley says the Ford government’s funding formula is not forward-thinking.
“The conservatives in Ontario can say, ‘we spend more on health care than anyone ever has,’ which is true—nominally in the nominal dollars, they do spend more. However, they fund (it) at less than the rate of inflation.”
“They do give hospitals an increase, but it’s not enough to meet their costs and so they cut staff, supplies, beds, they’re not factoring in population growth, they refuse to factor aging and population growth into their funding formulants and yet these are the most significant pressures on you know the need for a family doctor on pressure in the long-term care on pressure in the hospital beds.”
Natalie Mehra, Executive Director of the Ontario Healthcare Coalition, says the policy choices of the Ford government have contributed to the dire state of healthcare in the province.
“Healthcare in Ontario has never been in such disarray. It really is the worst crisis we’ve ever seen,” Mehra told PressProgress.
“At every step of the way our government has made policy choices that have prioritized privatization and completely cast aside running the health system competently and meeting people’s need for health care.”
According to data collected by the OHC, there are currently 2.5 million Ontarians without a family doctor and Ontario is currently funding public healthcare at the lowest rate in Canada.
“There are many communities where the crisis in primary care is the worst that it’s ever been and people just can’t get access to care unless they go to an emergency department,” Mehra said.
“The number of patients waiting on stretchers in the hallway has more than doubled since Ford took office, and it was his cornerstone promise.”
Mehra says part of the problem is that funds are being diverted out of public health care, which is only exacerbating the issue.
“Why would we pay to build new private clinics owned by for-profit companies run for their own profit, rather than just fund our public hospitals to increase the number of surgeries they’re doing?” Mehra asked.
“If you weren’t purposefully trying to drive the system into the ground in order to privatize, then how could you possibly explain those policy choices? It’s outrageous. People should be furious.”
Hurley says the problems impacting healthcare are multilayered and beyond the capacity crisis, healthcare workers are also dealing with unsustainable work loads.
“Many nurses and other staff are exiting the system now, unable to face the you know difference between the health care they’re able to provide and the health care they were trained to provide,” Hurley said.
“We have a current and worsening staff shortage across all of the caring professions.”
Hurley adds that it’s routine for the hospital system to be at 125% capacity, despite the fact that a hospital operating at 85% capacity is considered an “unsafe level” due to the risk of medical error.
“Caregivers feel so badly that the care they’re giving is inadequate. They know it’s inadequate. They hate it. And after a while, they learned that no matter how hard they work, you work through your breaks, you can not take lunch you can pick up every overtime shift to try to fix the holes in the schedule—but you can never make up for the fact that there simply aren’t enough staff,” Hurley said.
According to Hurley, the government needs to invest $2 billion dollars a year for the next four years in order to clear waitlists.
“We could make a significant dent at clearing the surgical wait list by running operating rooms 24/7. We could get people off the stretchers and end the hallway medicine which is going on.”
“The provincial government has a commitment to build 15,000 long-term care beds in a five-year period, but it’s actually only 3,500. There’s a huge wait list for that. That’s got to be accelerated.”
