NDP’s Horwath on spate of cancelled surgeries, hospital overcrowding due to flu surge

In the wake of media reports this morning about cancelled surgeries at Queensway Carleton Hospital in Ottawa and four regional hospitals in Huron and Perth counties, Andrea Horwath issued the following statement:

“Week after week, we’re hearing heartbreaking stories of overcrowding inside Ontario’s hospitals – and the suffering that families are going through. Queensway Carleton Hospital was forced to cancel 15 surgeries this week due to severe overcrowding because of a surge in flu patients. The hospital was forced to set up patient beds in waiting rooms and even ran out of IV poles at one point.

Four regional hospitals in Perth and Huron counties have also had to cancel surgeries due to overcrowding as a result of the flu spike. They are all operating well-above capacity right now.

I join patients and families who are horrified to learn just how badly patients are being let down in these communities and across Ontario.

It’s simply wrong for patients to go without access to patient bathrooms, without privacy, and without proper infection-control mechanisms as they lay in gurneys in make-shift spaces like waiting rooms.

It’s clear that the Wynne Liberals aren’t taking Ontario’s hospital capacity crisis seriously, and the few temporary beds they’ve scrambled to put in place don’t come close to undoing the damage Wynne caused by years of underfunding and frozen budgets. Like the Conservatives before them – who closed 28 hospitals and fired 6,000 nurses – the Wynne Liberals are letting Ontario families pay the price for their failure to fund the health care system.

It doesn’t have to be this way.