eHealth severance package would keep operating rooms open at Temiskaming Shores Hospital

TORONTO, Dec. 1, 2014 /CNW/ - A $252,000 severance package for an eHealth executive would keep the operating rooms running at the Temiskaming Shores Hospital, CUPE charged today. eHealth has been beset by scandals, including awarding consultants $16 million in contracts without tender.

Temiskaming Shores Hospital has announced plans to cut half of the hospital's operating room time, cut 18,000 nursing hours, cut cleaning hours, close the cafeteria and reduce other services.

" When the Liberal government, in its first mandate, introduced a tax specifically to improve healthcare services, no one dreamt that hospital operating rooms would be closed and nursing hours axed and a huge severance package would be given to an executive who jetted to PhD courses at taxpayer expense " Michael Hurley, president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions/CUPE said today. " There are days that I fear for the sanity of the Ministry of Health ".

Ontario boasts the most efficient hospitals in the country. The auditor general has estimated that hospitals need an additional 5% a year to meet the increased costs of the drugs which hospitals provide free to patients, doctors' salaries and medical technologies. Hospitals have been frozen for 3 years in a row despite the fact that Ontario's Liberal government imposed a special tax in their first mandate to pay for healthcare.

Across Ontario, hospitals are aggressively cutting services in the face of a 5-year funding freeze. In Wingham and New Liskeard, Timmins, North Bay, Hamilton, Sudbury and many other communities, beds are closing, services are being axed and staff laid off. A number of hospitals, like Penetanguishene, are facing closure.

SOURCE: Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (CUPE)

Michael Hurley, President, Ontario Council of Hospital Unions/CUPE (OCHU)    416-884-0770