Sarnia hospital professionals rally against Bill 60

Members with Bluewater Health’s OPSEU health professionals division demonstrated outside Sarnia’s hospital April 27 against pending provincial legislation they say would weaken the safe delivery of health care services.

Health care professionals belong to various professional colleges which regulate the credentials and conduct of their memberships, said Philip Hodgetts, unit chair with Local 145 at Bluewater Health.

“Part of Bill 60 is they are talking about having people do certain jobs without actually having to belong to a college and be regulated,” he said.

That means diminished oversight, he said.

“That’s an issue, if they’re deregulated, in regards to the fact that you can have people that don’t have the proper training and are not certified performing those jobs,” he said.

Affected professions could include medical laboratory technologists, medical radiation technologists, registered respiratory therapists, physicians, registered practical nurses and registered nurses, OPSEU officials said in a news release.

The demonstration in Sarnia was one of several staged by OPSEU health professionals division members across the province, Hodgetts said, noting about 350 people belong to the local.

Other concerns with Bill 60, the Your Health Act, introduced in February, include that the expansion of surgical and diagnostic services at for-profit clinics would pull funding and staffing away from public hospitals, OPSEU officials said in the news release.

It also could mean hospitals continue to handle the more difficult surgeries without the financial benefit of doing faster, “more lucrative” procedures, which would fall to clinics, it says.

“Privatization will lead, in the long run, to a two-tiered health care system where people who can afford to pay for extra services will be able to get a high level of service, and people who can’t, will not,” Hodgetts said.

In an emailed statement, Hanna Jensen, spokesperson for Minister of Health Sylvia Jones, said Bill 60 would “strengthen oversight of community surgical settings, while protecting the stability of doctors, nurses and other health care workers in our health care system.”

The pending legislation, which recently was debated at third reading, would “also establish a robust framework for the oversight of community and surgical diagnostic centres, including a provision to bring these centers under the oversight of a patient ombudsman,” Jensen emailed.

It would also make law “that Ontarians will always access insured services at community surgical and diagnostic centers with their OHIP card and never their credit card, consistent with the Canada Health Act.”

The Ontario Health Coalition, which is organizing a provincial referendum May 26 and 27 on the changes proposed in Bill 60, has also criticized the legislation for deregulation, as well as for creating positions with new powers to expand for-profit clinics.

In response to recent concerns raised by the local chapter of the health coalition, about the Pat Mailloux eye center potentially closing or diminishing as a result — something for which Bluewater Health’s chief of staff said there are no plans — Jensen said while publicly-funded, for-profit cataract clinics in Windsor, Kitchener-Waterloo and Ottawa are first in the queue, “our government will further leverage community surgical and diagnostic clinics across the province to reduce the surgical backlog.

“Cataracts will also not be the only procedures these other clinics do. We will also be expanding joint surgeries and diagnostic procedures,” Jensen said, adding Bill 60 is about addressing long wait times for surgeries and diagnostic tests.

“Ontario is proud to have one of the largest publicly funded health care systems in the world, a system that we are investing nearly $80 billion in this year,” she emailed.

“Premier (Doug) Ford and Minister Jones have been clear, Ontarians will always access our health care system with their OHIP card, not their credit card.”