Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath called for action on health-care wait times at a stop in London on Monday.
At a news conference held across from Victoria Hospital on Baseline Road East, Horwath was joined by local MPPs Peggy Sattler and Teresa Armstrong to address what she described as “the wait time crisis” in Ontario’s health care system.
Horwath was also joined by Dr. Sharad Rai, a local family physician, and Beverley McCann, a London senior who’s been waiting 18 months for a double hip replacement.
Horwath said if she were premier she would introduce a universal pharmacare program, increase funding to hospitals by at least as much as inflation, and introduce a moratorium on cutbacks of staffing in hospitals.
“Particularly frontline staff, to make sure we don’t continue to watch RNs, for example, be cut, to watch PSWs be laid off,” said Horwath.
“That’s the problem, as these hospitals are squeezed they are laying off their frontline staff.”
The London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) has some of the longest wait times in the province, with hip replacement wait times at 317 days. The provincial wait time is 245 days and the target is 182 days.
McCann noted that she is one of many in the province who is waiting to get their quality of life back.
“I miss playing golf. I miss doing a lot of activities that I’m used to doing, like volunteering in the community. I especially miss playing in the backyard with my grandson.”
The provincial target for knee replacement surgery is 182 days, with the provincial average wait time at 279 days and LHSC wait time 389 days. For an MRI scan, the province’s target wait time is 28 days but in actuality, the average wait is 102 days, 108 days at LHSC.
“I can tell you as a frontline family physician,” said Rai, “that if I want to refer one of my patients to urgent psychiatry, there’s approximately a four-week wait. That’s for urgent psychiatry, that’s not including community-based psychiatry, that’s not including referrals to other specialists.”
Horwath was asked during her stop whether she would like Premier Kathleen Wynne to call an early election.
“At this point in time I hope she does, because we can’t take any more of the damage the Liberals are doing.”
Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins released a statement to AM980 arguing that Horwath is misleading Ontarians, writing:
The NDP voted against a budget that provided an additional $16.9 million in funding for London Health Sciences this year alone. The NDP also voted against our OHIP+ plan that would see more than 100,000 children and youth in the London area have free access to over 4,400 eligible prescription medications. If NDP Leader, Andrea Horwath is serious about investing in health care then she should have supported the 2017 Budget where we increased health-care funding by $11.5 billion over the next 3 years, including a 3.1% overall increase across the hospital sector this year– greater than the rate of inflation.
The next provincial election is slated for spring 2018.
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