Human Resources Crisis in Health Care Staffing
You can’t fix a problem that was caused by government with solutions that will be provided by more government interventions.
The Following was written by Dr. Kerstin Kelly, MPP candidate from the Ontario Party and my personal choice to replace Conservative Laurie Scott as our local representative at Queens Park.
Of course, my ideal fix for this medical staffing problem would be to implement the Non-Government Options approach proposed by the Ontario Libertarian Party. However, I am realistic about the prospects of a Libertarian government being elected with a majority in order to see that vision become a reality. Therefore, I have placed by confidence in the more electable candidate Dr. Kelly and her plans going forward.
Readers may consider it strange that I, the OLP candidate, am endorsing another candidate. The reason is simple. As a former Professional Recruiter who has assessed thousands of job candidates for innumerable requests for staffing services, my expert assessment is that Dr. Kelly is the best choice of the 7 registered candidates to represent the voice of HKLB’s 114,000 residents to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.
Accordingly , I approve of the ideas and proposals presented by Dr. Kelly below.
============ note: comments within [ ] are mine.
Over the past two years, the Covid-19 pandemic has led our federal and provincial governments to implement extreme measures as a way of mitigating harm to citizens. However, as time and research has shown, many of those measures have done more harm than good. In Ontario, the economic and societal harm done by our current government’s misguided measures has been compounded by sitting politicians who—despite the growing body of empirical evidence that exposes the folly of their decisions—refuse to admit their errors or commit to a full and speedy reversal of their damaging actions.
The Ontario Party is committed to restoring what our current politicians decimated in the name of Covid-19 and is equally committed to ensuring the government-imposed mistakes and abuses of the last two years are never repeated again.
An Ontario Party Government will:
[note: even if the OP does not form government, MPP Dr. Kelly will be an outstanding advocate who possesses the character and qualities needed to gain the support of other MPPs to get the following plans into bills and on the docket schedule.]
• Immediately end any remaining restrictions on personal autonomy and liberty that have been instituted by the Ford government in the name of the Covid-19 pandemic.
• Pass legislation that virtually outlaws the provincial government’s ability to impose lockdowns, restrictions, and mandates like those of the last two years by establishing clear and onerously high criteria that must be met before any measures overriding citizens’ Charter rights can be enacted [or implemented without majority approval in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario].
• Require businesses and organizations that fired or suspended employees without pay for vaccine non-compliance return those workers to their original positions of employment. Post-secondary students deregistered for non-compliance must be readmitted, course credits lost due to removal before semester’s end must be amended to reflect the grade at which the student stood before being unjustly banned from campus.
• Ensure that resources and staff in Ontario’s hospitals, retirement homes, and other related facilities are sufficient to keep the medically vulnerable, in particular the elderly, safe and healthy. [Note: This was the same goal of the Great Barrington Declaration signed on October 4, 2020 which proposed a very practical Focussed Protection approach which has been endorsed by nearly 1 million medical professionals, scientists and concerned citizens. See gbdeclaration dot com]
• Ontario must be more selective with its immigration policy and preferentially select people with a value for life and work ethic consistent with a fundamentally loving, caring and compassionate society that doesn’t abandon its seniors at the first hint of a scare. People died in longterm care homes, often not of COVID, rather because staff did not show up. The military has reported that residents were left dehydrated, unfed, and in their own feces and urine for days. Ford did nothing after promising he would investigate and press criminal charges. Instead, he passed Bill 218 absolving them all of the crimes and inhibiting families from getting resolution. The longterm homes, both private and public, must be held accountable now and in the future. Ford subsequently gave the worst LTC offenders $millions for more beds as his final bribe before calling the election. Had he used the Ontario Emergency Management Organization, these vulnerable people would have been protected. (Ask Kerstin for the report.)
• Management and profits seemed more important than care and respect for the patients. The staff felt powerless and undervalued. Morale predictably dropped which explains the low staff retention rates. This entire debacle must to be investigated and corrected. A program to recruit staff should also be considered.
The Bigger Picture and the urgent need for innovation
Aside from the problems in Long Term Care, Ontario’s health care system is overpriced and underperforming. Despite being near number one in terms of funding when compared to other jurisdictions and countries providing universal health care (i.e., access to care regardless of ability to pay), our wait times are among the highest. We also have fewer physicians and acute care beds, and we lack sufficient medical technologies such as MRIs and CT scanners [These are vitally important tools to expedite timely and more accurate diagnoses. Non-Government services providers could be a viable way to better serve this need].
In 1993, Ontario residents waited 9.3 weeks to see a medical specialist. Specialist physicians surveyed in 2021 now report a median waiting time of 25.6 weeks between referral from a general practitioner and receipt of treatment.
As government, the Ontario Party will explore alternative care methods including strategies employed in countries such as Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Each of these countries maintain universal access health-care systems funded at levels near that of Ontario, but they surpass our province in access to health care, health-care outcomes, or both.
Key to their success has been their willingness to allow the private sector a role in the delivery of hospital and surgical care. They also allow residents the choice of purchasing private medical insurance to supplement existing public medical coverage. Such private, supplementary measures facilitate faster access to medical treatments and a wider selection of providers.
The argument that allowing private hospitals or private insurance will lead to less wealthy Ontario residents receiving substandard medical care is incorrect; it fails to acknowledge the larger, positive, impact of these proposals. It has been observed in European countries employing this mixed approach that as some citizens access private options, wait times decrease significantly and access to procedures increases within the public system.
An Ontario Party Government will. [The OLP’s Non-Government Options approach would likely lead to a robust, competitive Medicare Market in which the Government Service Providers would see a shrinkage in “market share” in direct response to the growing gain in market share by Non-Government Options services providers. Therefore, the need for more government spending as suggested below will likely not materialize under the Libertarian model]
• Permit non-profit organizations and private corporations to build, own, and manage hospitals and will permit citizens to hold supplemental, private medical insurance.
• Provide funding for greater public hospital bed capacity and the hiring of thousands of more healthcare workers.
• Streamline the process for accreditation of foreign-trained healthcare professionals who have been trained in jurisdictions with similar accreditation standards as Canada.
• Open up more spots in Canadian medical schools, which have become notoriously challenging to gain entry. Many smart, young prospective Canadian medical students are travelling to schools in Ireland, the Caribbean and elsewhere, and then finding jobs in the USA. Time to keep these smart students at home.
• Explore broadening the role of nurse practitioners and the creation of other, new healthcare provider roles.
• Protect and assist private and charitable organizations providing alternatives to established medical providers when caring for individuals and families in crisis situations (e.g., Crisis Pregnancy Care Centres; Covid Care Alliance).
