London, Ont. hospitals need thousands of new staff and hundreds more beds to address a growing health-care crisis, says the province’s largest union of hospital workers.
According to a newly released report from the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, hospitals in London need to add 343 more beds and hire an additional 3,094 new staff to keep up with the increasing demands of an aging and growing population.
Michael Hurley, the president of the OCHU, says the additions are desperately needed.
“This would allow us to deal with the current crisis and actually move things to a point where we would see an improvement in the quality of care,” Hurley said.
The OCHU says hospitals in other provinces have 18 per cent more staff per capita than those in Ontario. Within the staffing deficit, the OCHU says nurses and inpatient services are the most affected.
Numbers pulled from Statistics Canada show the number of job vacancies in Ontario has risen from around 5,000 in 2015 to over 18,000 in 2023.
Earlier this year, London Health Sciences Centre officials told Global News they had a nursing vacancy rate of around 500. In late April, LHSC had 388 active postings for registered nurses, and 321 were filling existing positions. The hospital had 116 active job postings for registered practical nurses, including 60 filling existing roles.
In response to questions from Global News, LHSC says they consistently hire “about 150 to 250 new team members each month.”
“LHSC is not immune to the challenges facing Ontario’s health-care system and that we, alongside our fellow system partners, are committed to doing what we can to mitigate them,” added LHSC in a statement.
Hurley says while London is in need of more staff, they are not alone. He says the rise of for-profit healthcare options, and decline in traditional options due to cuts in rural areas, is causing people to come to London more often for treatment.
“There’s such a profound impact on smaller hospitals with these funding cuts,” said Hurley. “So as these ERs close and other services in these communities close, people come to London for care. So, one of the reasons you have such a pressure in your system is because of the influx of people from these surrounding communities.”
In an emailed statement to Global News, a spokesperson for Ontario’s Minister of Health Sylvia Jones said, “expanding capacity across the province, getting shovels in the ground for 50 hospital developments over 10 years that will add over 3,000 beds.”
The ministry also said they had given approval to LHSC and St. Joesph’s Health Care to plan facility developments in the future.
While Hurley acknowledged the province’s place to add 3,000 beds, he says it is insufficient to keep up with an aging population. He and the OCHU add that even if enough beds are added, there is not enough staff to work them.
The OCHU says there are over 15,000 licensed nurses and personal support workers that have left the field.
“They were trained, qualified, but they have given up,” said Hurley. He says incentives to bring them back and the province dropping the appeal of Bill 124 – which capped wages of public sector workers – would help lessen the loss.
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