First do no harm

In fact, the cutbacks are being planned in a context of urgent and unmet care needs across the health care continuum from hospitals to long-term care and home care. [...] He raises questions about the viability of government plans to move more patients out of hospitals into home care and long-term care homes given the lack of funding planned and the already-existing waiting lists for these services.8 In contrast, Ontario’s Auditor General found the government’s plan to reduce drug program costs to be viable and concludes that the projected $250 million reduction ov [...] Though health spending is growing as a percentage of our GDP, when compared to the rest of Canada, the evidence is that there is room for growth in health spending to address the urgent unmet care needs of Ontario’s Spending Trends Ontarians without spending becoming “out-of-control”. [...] But, as evidenced in the previous section, a review of the spending data reveals that Ontario in near the bottom of the country in health care funding. [...] This study, published in the British Medical Journal looked at 22 million patient visits to Ontario emergency departments over a five year period, and found that the risk of death and hospital readmission increased with the degree of overcrowding at the time the patient arrived in the emergency department.