Ontario public health cuts will worsen hallway medicine: ER docs
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More than 100 Toronto emergency room professionals have signed a letter to the Doug Ford government, calling for the province to back away from planned funding cuts to public health.
Dr. Raghu Venugopal, an emergency room physician who works in three GTA hospitals, said spending on public health helps lower the demand for expensive and scarce hospital beds, making the investment especially critical during an opioid crisis.
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“There could not be a worst time in the history of the province of Ontario to be cutting funds to Toronto Public Health,” Venugopal said Tuesday.
Ford and Health Minister Christine Elliott promised to end hallway medicine, yet doctors find themselves treating patients in crowded ERs for conditions that could be addressed through public health initiatives, he insisted.
The result is ER hallways and waiting rooms where some patients literally have to lay down on the floor because there’s no space for them, he said.
“I trained to be an emergency physician but sadly I am a hallway physician,” Venugopal added. “I was even asked last week to examine an elderly senior citizen with a gynaecological problem in a hallway stretcher … This is Ontario.”
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Venugopal was one of 106 health professionals, including emergency room physicians from St. Michael’s Hospital, the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and University Health Network, that signed on to the letter asking for public health care cuts to be reversed.
Councillor Joe Cressy, chair of the Toronto Board of Health, said that while the provincial government did not go ahead as planned with retroactive cuts to public health funding, it is enforcing changes to the funding formula that will cost Toronto $14 million a year.
The province plans to lower its share of programs it currently funds at 100% to 70%.
Travis Kann, a spokesman for Elliott, said the government has been working with municipal and health-care officials to look at ways of modernizing the medical system.
“Among other things, we heard that municipalities need more time to accommodate changes to cost-sharing arrangements and to ensure a seamless transition to the new regional entities,” he said in a statement.
A 10% cap on funding decreases means the City of Toronto will only need to pay $4.3 million more on public health expenditures, out of an overall operating budget of $13 billion, he said.
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