(September 21 2023)

By: Allan Benner, St. Catharines Standard

Allan Benner / Torstar

Niagara Health Coalition members held a rally at the Welland hospital Thursday, urging residents to join people from across the province for a protest at Queen’s Park, Monday.

As hospital service reductions continue in the region and across Ontario, Niagara Health Coalition members are urging as many people as possible to join them during a rally planned Monday in Toronto.

“There doesn’t seem to be an end in sight at all,” said Sue Hotte, who heads the local coalition.

“Why is this happening? There’s always been underfunding, but now it’s underfunding to the nth degree.”

Hotte was among 15 people who gathered at the Welland hospital Thursday morning, bringing attention to service reductions in Niagara and across the province and calling on hospital officials to restore services as well as for the province to provide adequate funding to ensure services continue.

While more than 70 people from Niagara have already registered to take part in the rally at Queen’s Park aboard two buses the coalition has chartered, protesting the temporary closures of emergency departments across Ontario, Hotte said “we have room for more.”

She asked people interested in joining to call 905-932-1646 to register for the bus, while contributing a $10 donation to reserve a seat.

Staff shortages forced Niagara Health to reduce hours at urgent care centres (UCCs) in Port Colborne and Fort Erie hospitals — closing the facilities from 4 a.m. to 10 a.m. nightly — after 274 shifts at the UCCs could not be fully staffed by physicians.

Hotte, however, wondered if summer vacation schedules may have contributed to staff shortages.

She said a shortage of anesthesiologists also forced Niagara Health to transfer patients needing emergency surgery from Welland hospital on evenings and weekends to other sites.

In a statement, Niagara Health said the staff shortage “is not a seasonal issue,” and it is continuing to face shortages of emergency department physicians as well as anesthesiologists, in addition to 502 vacancies among other hospital staff.

While continuing to work to fill shifts at the St. Catharines emergency department, the hospital system said reduced hours at the UCCs have allowed it to maintain full physician coverage at the Welland and Niagara Falls emergency departments.

“We cannot find enough physicians, nurses or specialists to fill the vacant positions we have. These pressures on our staffing are further exacerbated by the lack of family physicians in the region,” Niagara Health said, adding it is doing everything it can to recruit.

“We can’t run any services without staff.”

Hotte said the provincial government has continued to fail to address the shortage of medical staff.

She said staff “keep leaving” hospitals across Ontario “and nothing is being done to address that.”

“Only this year … are there going to be a few more spaces available for medical training at different universities for doctors and specialists,” Hotte added. “Why has this government not addressed the who staffing issue which they were very well aware of? They had all the reports from every single organization since 2004.”

Ministry of health spokesperson Hannah Jensen, said the province is taking action.

“Since 2018 our government has increased the health care budget by over $16 billion, grown our health-care workforce by over 63,000 nurses and 8,000 new physicians and built 3,500 hospital beds across the province,” she said.

Niagara Centre MPP Jeff Burch said the way health-care workers are being treated is part of the problem, including some who are still fighting for “pandemic pay” increases promised years ago.

“That’s the kind of thing that has led to this crisis,” he said. “That’s why we have problems finding hospital employees because we don’t treat them well. We treat them terribly. We don’t treat them with respect.”

Helen Hamilton, whose husband Tom has been a patient at the Welland hospital for about four weeks, said they are grateful for the care he is receiving.

Angie Desmarais, a former Port Colborne city councillor and health-care advocate, said about half the population of the city does not have a family doctor, and many of them are seniors who rely on the urgent care centre.

Niagara Health said UCCs are continuing to see a similar volume of patients, despite the nightly closures.

“It is difficult to provide a direct comparison as numerous variables affect ED and UCC volumes, but we are confident our teams are continuing to service the residents of Port Colborne and Fort Erie.”

Click here for original article