Health Care: 1) RVH Returns To Universal Masking; 2)Doctors, Nurses Call For Reforms To Prevent Overcrowding In Canada’s Emergency Rooms 3) Pharmacare Not The Top Health Priority For Most Canadians: Survey
1) RVH Returns To Universal Masking
Courtesy of Barrie360.com, ReleasePublished: Dec 20th, 2023
News release – Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH)
Effective immediately, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH) is returning to universal masking. In addition to self-screening, visitors are now required to don a hospital-issued mask upon entry.
Due to increasing rates of respiratory illnesses in the community RVH’s Infection Prevention and Control and Occupational Health and Wellness teams have determined that masking is once again necessary to protect patients, visitors and members of TEAM RVH.
Masks may be removed only while eating or drinking outside of Café Royale and in the Food Court.
2) Doctors, Nurses Call For Reforms To Prevent Overcrowding In Canada’s Emergency Rooms
Courtesy of Barrie360.com and Canadian PressPublished: Dec 21st, 2023
By Camille Bains
Overcrowded emergency rooms are frustrating patients and staff in parts of the country as respiratory illness season exacerbates long waits for care.
Combined with bed shortages, an aging population and a lack of community care, it’s converging to create a crisis, health professionals say.
“Wait times are through the roof,” Erin Ariss, president of the Ontario Nurses Association, said Wednesday. “Nurses are beginning their shifts in the morning and coming on to emergency departments that are full or over capacity with admitted patients.”
Packed emergency rooms are also a major concern in Quebec, where Health Minister Christian Dubé said Wednesday that the public should avoid going to ERs altogether if they can, and instead seek care at family medicine clinics, or clinics led by nurse practitioners. He made the announcement after a group representing chief doctors in the province’s ERs sent a letter saying overcrowding is “out of control.”
Dr. Judy Morris, head of an association of emergency room doctors in Quebec, said earlier this week that occupancy rates were as high as they’d ever been and some hospitals regularly have twice as many ER patients as they can handle. Health data website Index Sante said the average emergency department occupancy in Quebec on Thursday morning was above 120 per cent.
Emergency rooms in other parts of the country are also crowded. In Nova Scotia, for example, the health authority’s website listed expected ER wait times of up to six hours on Thursday in some hospitals, including Cape Breton Regional Hospital. And in Winnipeg, three out of four hospitals were reporting average ER wait times of between seven and nine hours on Thursday morning.
Earlier this month, Dubé said the recent deaths of two people in a Montreal-area ER were “completely unacceptable,” though he defended his government’s actions to reduce wait times. Quebec’s coroner’s office and the local health authority in Chateauguay, Que., are investigating the deaths.
Hospitals in Saskatchewan’s major cities have also been over capacity due to a lack of space for people needing long-term or alternative care, combined with staff shortages. In Regina, two hospitals recently violated the fire code by crowding hallways with patient beds, according to a leaked email chain. The Saskatchewan Health Authority said Thursday that it will work to add more staff and discharge patients in a timely manner to free up space.
Dr. Michael Howlett, president of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, said the group is expecting to convene a national forum next year that would bring together policymakers and health-care professionals to discuss how the health-care system could be reformed to deal with pressures that end up affecting ERs.
That includes a lack of hospital beds for patients who need to be transferred from ERs, a lack of long-term care beds and home-care staff for patients who remain on hospital wards, and staff recruitment and retention issues.
Howlett said he could not find any home-care staff for his own mother after she was to be discharged from hospital.
“She stayed in hospital for six months,” he said. “All across the country you’ll find anywhere between 10 and 25 per cent of hospital beds are taken up by people who need an alternate level of care, besides acute-care hospitals, but they can’t be accommodated.”
Much of the action that needs to be taken is for the sake of patient safety, Howlett said.
“We don’t want to be just complainers that say it’s all broken and you guys have to fix it. We have lots of people in the country with great expertise in health systems,” he said.
“I mean, it’s a fairly critical point in Canadian health-care history and so I’m not sure how long we should really wait to implement solutions.”
Ariss, the head of the Ontario nurses’ group, said nurses are overwhelmed after enduring long working hours at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced some to leave for jobs in public health or with agencies that gave them more balance.
Ontario alone needs 24,000 more registered nurses, but working conditions aren’t exactly attracting new recruits, said Ariss, who worked as an ER nurse for 20 years in Kitchener, Ont., before leaving in December 2020.
Making matters worse is that emergency rooms in some rural areas have been temporarily closed or shut down because of staffing shortages, leaving patients to travel further for care, Ariss added.
“There’s a feeling of hopelessness at this point, that there’s no help coming,” she said.
3) Pharmacare Not The Top Health Priority For Most Canadians: Survey
Courtesy of Barrie260.com and Canadian PressPublished: Dec 21st, 2023
As Liberals and New Democrats negotiate what a future national drug plan should look like, a new survey suggests pharmacare is not at the top of the priority list for most Canadians.
The survey shows that when asked to name their top two health−care priorities, only 18 per cent of those surveyed said the government should prioritize creating a new, universal, single−payer drug plan.
More funding toward surgical wait times, building more long−term care homes and expanding mental−health services all garnered significantly more support, at 36 per cent, 32 per cent and 30 per cent respectively.
“All of that comes before having a universal single−payer drug plan,” said Christian Bourque, Leger’s executive vice−president.
“It’s not at the top of Canadians’ priority list.”
The Leger polling firm conducted the web survey of 1,622 Canadians from Friday to Sunday. Online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they are not considered truly random samples.
The Liberals promised to pass pharmacare legislation that would serve as the foundation of a national drug plan by the end of 2023, as part of their political pact with the NDP.
The survey shows 53 per cent of those polled were unfamiliar with the government’s plans.
In the deal, New Democrats said they would support the minority government on key House of Commons votes in exchange for movement on NDP priorities like pharmacare.
But the two parties couldn’t agree on the language in the bill before the House of Commons rose for the holidays.
They have instead agreed on a new March 1 deadline for the Liberals to table legislation.
The main sticking point appears to be the NDP’s staunch insistence on a universal, single−payer system, which was the model recommended by Canada’s advisory council on the implementation of national pharmacare in 2019.
Mark Holland has also repeatedly cited the government’s need to be financially prudent.
Of those surveyed, only 22 per cent said a new drug plan should replace basic drug coverage they receive from employers.
A plurality of 44 per cent supported a plan that would offer coverage to people without existing drug coverage, seniors, and people who make less than $90,000 per year.
“That’s probably due, to some extent, to the fact that two out of three Canadians do have private health−care coverage, either themselves or through their spouse,” Bourque said.
Though there doesn’t appear to be overwhelming support for prioritizing a national drug plan, there isn’t a lot of outright opposition to the idea, Bourque noted.
Only 17 per cent of those who responded said a new drug plan should not be a priority for the government. Even among respondents who intend to vote for the Conservative party, opposition to the plan was relatively weak.
“Once you look inside the actual Conservative voter base, only 23 per cent of them say ’I don’t want (any) part of pharmacare,’” said Bourque.
“So, if there was a form of pharmacare, I think it would be good news for a majority of Canadians.”
Even if the Liberals and NDP agree on language for a pharmacare bill, there’s no guarantee the government would move ahead with a national drug plan in the immediate term.
The legislation is key to securing the NDP’s support and preventing an election before the scheduled contest in 2025.
That’s all the more important to the government’s political future, after the Conservatives overtook the Liberals in the polls this year by a significant margin.
Leger found in its latest poll that Conservative support has dipped slightly over the past few weeks.
Among decided voters, 38 per cent of respondents said they would vote for the Tories if federal elections were held at the time of the survey. That’s down from 40 per cent of respondents in late November.
But the Conservatives still have a significant lead over the Liberals’ 28 per cent support and the New Democrats at 18 per cent.
Patricia is the Business Mentor and owner of Grow Vantage and a Past President of the Barrie Chamber of Commerce. She applies over 30 years of business experience (from start-up to corporate) to mentor entrepreneurs. Since 2011, she has held over 6,500 coaching and training sessions in-person and online. Through Ask For Directions Training, her entrepreneurial training program (and parent company Grow Vantage), and as a business coach, she works with start-ups who are new (or who have lost traction) to design, launch and grow their businesses. Along with 20 other expert instructors she teaches strategies in marketing, sales, communications, and finance, as well as practical techniques to increase productivity, and manage their businesses. In other words, everything entrepreneurs need to learn to grow and run their businesses successfully, and avoid the costly mistakes they can't even see coming - that lead to delays in growth and getting stuck.
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