‘Full Bellies. Happy Hearts.' returns
Kitchener Watch
A campaign for the Food Bank of Waterloo Region has returned to ensure all kids have enough to eat through the summer months.
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CBC
34 minutes ago
- CBC
'Enough is enough:' Local politicians decry Niagara Health's decision to reduce urgent care hours
Niagara Health's decision to reduce summer hours at its only two urgent care centres in Fort Erie and Port Colborne, Ont., has sparked outrage. Some local elected officials in Fort Erie are calling on the CEO to resign, the provincial government to intervene and an immediate reversal of the decision. Mayor Wayne Redekop told his council Monday evening that the people running the local hospital system "don't give a rats ass about Fort Erie." His perspective was echoed by other councillors, including Nick Dubanow. "I think we need to kick Niagara Health to the curb," he said. "I'm very angry. Enough is enough." Earlier that day, Niagara Health had announced that throughout July, August and early September, it will close the Fort Erie Urgent Care Centre on Fridays and the Port Colborne Urgent Care Centre on Saturdays. Both centres will be closed on Canada Day, July 1, and the Labour Day long weekend, Aug. 30 to Sept. 1. Fort Erie's will also be closed on the Civic Holiday long weekend, Aug. 1 to 4. Normally they operate seven days a week. Fort Erie Coun. Tom Lewis advised council on Monday he will be putting forward two motions later this month. The first will call for the town to "immediately withhold" committed funding to Niagara Health's new hospital, although it's unclear the dollar amount. The second will call for the Niagara Health CEO Lynn Guerriero and members of the board to resign, and for the province to appoint a supervisor to oversee operations, Lewis said. "Niagara Health has broken our trust," he said. "We owe it to the people of Fort Erie to take a firm stance. And I believe this council will." Niagara Health said in a statement to CBC Hamilton local officials are oversimplifying the complexity of running a regional hospital system. "We are disappointed when misinformation is shared by elected local officials in their zeal to build support for their campaigns," said spokesperson Erica Bajer. Doctor shortage prompts closures The closures are because the region faces a shortage of physicians qualified to work in emergency departments, Niagara Health said in a news release. The doctors who'd normally work in urgent care need to be deployed to hospitals and even still many shifts there remain unfilled. "We know these closures are frustrating and concerning for the communities affected, said Dr. Kevin Chan, chief of staff, in the release. "They are not decisions we made lightly. This is the minimum level of closure required to maintain emergency care across the region." There are no hospitals or emergency rooms in Fort Erie or Port Colborne and thousands of people are without a family doctor. The closest hospital is in Welland — about a 12-kilometre drive from Port Colborne and 32-kilometre drive from Fort Erie. Niagara Health also runs a hospital in St. Catharines and another in Niagara Falls. Urgent care centres are supposed to be for people with health conditions who can't wait for a scheduled medical appointment but don't necessarily need emergency care, says Niagara Health's website. Those health conditions include nausea, vomiting, fevers, flu, minor cuts that may need stitches, sports injuries, ear, throat and eye problems and minor asthma flare-ups or allergic reactions. Niagara Health said the urgent care closures are despite "exhaustive efforts" to recruit physicians including financial incentives, direct outreach, targeted recruitment campaigns and flexible scheduling. "Further, Niagara Health is working tirelessly to recruit more physicians to the region and it's disingenuous to minimize the incredible challenge of physician recruitment in the face of a province-wide doctor shortage," said Bajer. In 2009, Niagara Health converted Fort Erie's Douglas Memorial Hospital's emergency department to an urgent care centre. In 2023, it reduced hours at both centres from operating overnight to closing in the evening. It's also planning to close them permanently in 2028 when a new hospital in Niagara Falls is supposed to open. 'Treated as afterthoughts," mayor says At a news conference Wednesday, Redekop and Port Colborne Mayor Bill Steele said they don't believe Niagara Health had a plan to keep the urgent care centres running seven days a week despite thousands of tourists visiting throughout the summer. "I'm concerned we're being treated as afterthoughts and it's becoming normalized," Steele said. They mayors were also joined by local NDP MPP Wayne Gates. Steele and Redekop said they spoke with the Niagara Health CEO in May, where she gave them a heads up of staffing shortages that could impact urgent care. The mayors said they could help to recruit physicians and in a follow-up email requested to see the Niagara Health recruitment program, and the number of doctors needed, but never heard back. Then on Monday, they had a call with Chan, the chief of staff. He advised them of the reduced hours, which Niagara Health made public during their meeting, Redekop said. No heads up was given to the mayors or councillors. Redekop said at the meeting they also learned Niagara Health doesn't have a formal physician recruitment program or plan to develop a training program so family doctors can more easily become qualified to work in urgent care and emergency departments. Niagara Health said it does "aggressive and ongoing recruitment efforts" that aren't limited to "a single campaign" and provided this "clarification" to the mayors on Monday. Bajer said Niagara Health sent information about its training process to them on Wednesday. But Niagara Health also didn't post its physician schedules for the urgent care centres two months in advance as it normally does to give doctors who want more hours the opportunity to take them, Redekop said. The hospital system said its process was delayed "as we worked to stabilize physician coverage across the entire hospital system, particularly in emergency departments, which are provincially mandated to remain operational." Ministry says up to Niagara Health to decide Several Fort Erie councillors said they didn't believe Niagara Health tried to keep the urgent care centres open, even as it will force more people to go to already busy hospitals for health care. "The hospital system is effectively condemning its own emergency room," said Coun. Joan Christensen at Monday's council meeting, after having also joined the phone call with Niagara Health earlier in the day. "In my opinion, our battle should now be with the Government of Ontario. We can't negotiate with people who are consistently misrepresenting the truth." The Ministry of Health said in a statement it is up to Niagara Health's to decide how to deliver services. "While the Ministry of Health was not directly involved in this decision, we will continue to work closely with Niagara Health and other hospital partners ... to ensure they have the tools they need to deliver high-quality care close to home," said press secretary Ema Popovic.
CTV News
39 minutes ago
- CTV News
Wait times for major medical procedures still longer than pre-pandemic levels, data shows
An IV pole is seen in a room in the emergency ward at The Montreal Children's Hospital on Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024 in Montreal. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christinne Muschi Five years on from the COVID-19 pandemic, wait times for key surgeries have yet to bounce back, new data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) shows. Released Thursday, the data set tracks wait times for 'priority procedures' such as hip and knee replacements, cataract surgeries, cancer treatments including radiation therapy, and diagnostic imaging like MRI and CT scans. While the total count of scheduled procedures has risen for some since 2019, the numbers show, Canadian patients are often still waiting longer to get them than before the pandemic began. 'Health systems are managing multiple challenges, including an aging and growing population, rising demand for procedures, and health workforce shortages,' CIHI noted in a release. 'More scheduled procedures are being performed to meet growing demand.' Playing catch-up The data shows that, surgery-to-surgery, some kinds of procedures performed on Canadian patients have returned to pre-pandemic totals or even exceeded them. Between April and September of 2019, Canadian surgeons replaced 22,000 hips and 35,000 knees, and while those numbers dropped significantly at the outset of COVID-19, they rebounded to 28,000 and 42,000, respectively, over the same six-month period in 2024. Cataract surgeries told a similar story, falling by roughly 50 per cent between 2019 and 2020, but ending the summer of 2024 at 11 per cent more than the 2019 total. On the whole, cancer surgery totals have grown seven per cent since before the pandemic, and 16 per cent more MRI and CT scans were completed last year than during the same period in 2019. The news isn't all good. While totals for some procedures may have caught up to 2019, Canada's patient population has changed significantly in the intervening years, meaning that wait times haven't necessarily come down in length. National benchmarks recommend that patients receive hip or knee replacements within six months, but last year, only 68 per cent of hip replacements and 61 per cent of knee replacements happened within that deadline, down from 75 and 70 per cent, respectively, in 2019. The problem is also true for radiation therapies, which saw the number of patients receiving care within the 28-day recommended wait falling by three percentage points between 2019 and 2024. For surgery to repair hip fractures, the benchmark is tighter at just 48 hours. Eighty-three per cent of patients got their surgery within that deadline last year, down from 86 per cent, five years earlier. Meanwhile, cataract surgeries have nearly rebounded to pre-pandemic waits, with 69 per cent of procedures conducted within the 112-day recommended time frame, down one percentage point from 70 in 2019. And it's not just about meeting benchmarks. CIHI notes that wait times have grown for diagnostic tests, like MRI and CT scans, as well as for major treatments including for breast, bladder, colorectal and lung cancer. Median wait times for treatment have grown by between one and five days for each of the above cancers, and by nine days for prostate cancer, which still has fewer procedures conducted annually, compared to 2019. As of last year, the median patient waited 50 days for prostate cancer surgery. Breaking the backlog CIHI says wait times are downstream from a variety of issues. Not only has Canada's population grown in the time since the pandemic began, reaching more than 41.5 million people as of this year, but that population also skews older than before. The 65-and-older age group grew 19 per cent over the five years covered by the data set, almost twice as fast as Canada's overall population growth. What's more, a shortage of health-care workers across the country has made meeting the rising demand for surgery more difficult, with populations of key providers like anesthesiologists and orthopedic surgeons growing significantly slower than the country as a whole. The result: More patients, presenting with more complex issues, and comparatively fewer resources to go around. 'In many cases, post-pandemic patients have presented later to the surgeon and presented with more complex problems than they would have in the past,' said James Howard, chief of orthopedic surgery at London Health Sciences Centre, in a CIHI release. 'We continue to have increasing demand for care for the baby boomer generation. These factors have a combined effect on wait times for surgery.' The institute raises some potential solutions to the deepening strain on the health-care system, from a more streamlined process for booking and intake for specialized care, to closely monitoring wait lists to prioritize patients based on health status and readiness for surgery, to exploring new and different settings for some kinds of care. 'Managing wait times for surgery remains a priority as health systems address the challenges of an aging and growing population, as well as health workforce shortages,' the report concludes. 'Despite an increase in the number of surgeries performed, the capacity of health systems to meet wait time targets for these surgeries remains strained.' With files from The Canadian Press
CBC
2 hours ago
- CBC
A day in the life of a rural paramedic — and why response times can be dangerously long
Outside of major cities, paramedic response times can be significantly longer than in urban areas, affecting patient outcomes in some high-priority cases. This is particularly true in Quebec, where a recent report found response times doubled in rural areas, where paramedics are calling for more resources.
