New report shows Ottawa needs over 580 beds and more than 4,900 additional staff to meet demand in hospitals

Unless the provincial government is ready to make significant investments to improve staffing levels and capacity, the crisis in the hospital sector won’t get any better.

That’s according to CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU/CUPE), which released a report on Thursday, Aug. 24.

The report, The Hospital Crisis: No Capacity, No Plan, No End, shows that the province must improve staffing levels and bed capacity by 22 per cent each to meaningfully address patient needs over the next four years. In Ottawa, that equates to 4,925 additional staff and about 585 more beds.”

“The government must address the untenable situation in our public hospitals on a war footing,” said Michael Hurley, the president of OCHU/CUPE, which represents 40,000 hospital workers across the province. “We are in a deep crisis with no signs of improvement as we continue to fail patients and workers alike. You’ve got services being reduced because of staff shortages, you’ve got patients being treated on stretchers because of lack of capacity, you’ve got people waiting for services for long periods or being turned away from services, you’ve got people being discharged prematurely. It’s unacceptable.”

The report shows Ontario has 38 per cent less inpatient staffing in hospitals compared to the Canadian average.

If Ontario’s staffing reached the same level as the rest of the country, it would have 33,778 more full-time staff including inpatient workers and support staff.

The OCHU/CUPE report provides several recommendations to address staffing issues including the provision of more full-time work, improvement in real wages, and banning the use of agency staff.

“We have a huge problem in this province with the lack of capacity in hospitals, and we hear crickets from the provincial government,” said Hurley on The Sam Laprade Show on Aug. 24. “We have not seen any plan from our government.”

According to CUPE, the government’s plan to grow capacity by 3,000 beds over the next 10 years falls well short and would achieve only a 0.79 per cent annual increase even as the government itself projects an annual 1.5 per cent population growth rate over the next decade.