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RENFREW, Ont. – The recent announcement that the Renfrew hospital plans to cut birthing and obstetrics, highlights the cynicism and deception in the province’s Closer to Home healthcare strategy, says Michael Hurley, president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU) of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE).
Downsizing hospitals, cutting beds and shedding services is the basis for health care delivery reforms supported by all three major Ontario political parties. Small rural hospitals are particularly threatened. In theory, services closer to home are supposed to replace services cut. In the case of Renfrew, says Hurley, this cut will mean travel to Ottawa, a community 94 km away, possible only by car or by Greyhound.
The Renfrew Victoria Hospital plans to close its obstetrics unit in June. The closure comes following significant bed, surgery, procedure and therapy cuts at neighbouring hospitals in Arnprior and Perth and Smiths Falls. Ottawa too will see thousands of procedures moved from the Ottawa Hospital and privatized to private clinics, some of them for-profit.
“Short of the closure of five hospitals in Niagara, eastern Ontario is seeing the harshest cuts to hospital services anywhere in the province,” says Hurley.
Ontario has the fewest hospital beds to population of any province in Canada or country in the OECD. The efficiency of the Ontario hospital system is unparalleled, says Hurley. “Cutting obstetrics is appalling. It is a reasonable expectation in a developed country, that a community like Renfrew will offer services like obstetrics. Health planners who are erasing a woman’s right to give birth in her community should strongly reconsider.”
CUPE has asked the Ontario Healthcare Coalition for help in responding to the cuts in obstetrics in Renfrew. A community meeting will be organized in the near future.
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For more information please contact:
Michael Hurley President Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU) 416-884-0770
Stella Yeadon CUPE Communications 416-559-9300
