A report intended for hospital executives, that was leaked by a Liberal MPP, warns the situation in Ontario's health care system is only getting worse, driven by a rise in respiratory illnesses.
The report released by Liberal MPP and emergency room physician Dr. Adil Shamji suggests nine of ten emergency department patients, who were admitted to the hospital, waited an average of 45 hours for an in-patient bed.
Shamji conceded that Ontario is not alone in its healthcare struggles.
"It's not surprising to me, given the challenge of the last two-and-a-half years of this pandemic, that other jurisdictions are sharing some of the struggles. Ours are worse," said Shamji. "Because we have a failure of leadership, and because we haven't dealt with, in any sort of meaningful way, things like our health human resource shortage, the regulation of temporary for-profit nursing agencies."
While he blames the crisis on a lack of leadership at the provincial level, Shamji said there are steps everyone can take to help.
"One of the most important things that we can do is to make sure that our influenza and COVID-19 vaccinations are up to date, and I would like to encourage everyone to do that," he suggested.
Some good news for Midwestern Ontario, the report found that hospitals in the Grey Bruce Health Services and the South Bruce Grey Health Centre are managing well, specifically the hospitals in Walkerton and Markdale. Shamji explained why that is.
"The hospitals that are doing the best right now in the province, if I recall correctly, are the very low volume hospitals," said Shamji. "Any hospitals that are teaching hospitals, pediatric hospitals, or have a higher degree of complexity, are doing significantly worse."
He urged the government to take steps now to ease the burden on hospitals.
"They could dramatically increase masking. They could dramatically increase vaccination. In schools, where the issue is the worst, they could dramatically increase ventilation," he said.
Shamji warned that the cold and flu season, which now also includes COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), is still about eight weeks away from peaking.
