LHINs Waste Millions on Failed Strategy While Long-Term Care Wait List Grows by 4,000


NEWS:

BARRIE – Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak and Garfield Dunlop, MPP for Simcoe North, today met with a group of home care service providers and seniors at the office of Senior Homecare by Angels to discuss ideas on how to better provide seniors with access to proper health care. Dalton McGuinty’s LHINs have failed their first real test, mismanaging an Aging at Home strategy.

After three years and $250 million, Dalton McGuinty’s LHINs have failed to make progress on the Aging at Home strategy’s goals of reducing the number of long-term care (LTC) and alternate-level-of-care (ALC) patients, and reducing emergency room wait times. Since the LHINs started managing the strategy, the provincial wait list for LTC beds has grown by 4,000 people and emergency room wait times remain above provincial targets.

The North Simcoe Muskoka LHIN, which represents Barrie, spent over $10.5 million in the first three years on the Aging at Home strategy, yet its wait list for long-term care has increased by over 500 people, the percentage of ALC patients occupying hospital beds is the second worst in Ontario, and wait times at the Royal Victoria ER remain above the provincial benchmark.

QUOTES:

“Barrie seniors worked hard to build a better province. Today, in their retirement, they deserve a government that, in turn, is working hard for them. Dalton McGuinty and the North Simcoe Muskoka LHIN have failed seniors. Dalton McGuinty’s LHIN model is broken and has to go.”

– Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak

“An Aging at Home strategy should reduce the strain on Ontario long-term-care facilities and hospitals and help more seniors stay in their own homes longer. Under the scandal-plagued LHIN bureaucracies, this program has instead become the latest example of health-care mismanagement and waste.”

– Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak

QUICK FACTS:

  • Since the LHINs started to manage the Aging at Home strategy, the wait list for long-term care beds (which has doubled under Dalton McGuinty to over 24,000) has grown by 4,000 people.
  • The North Simcoe Muskoka LHIN spent over $10.5 million in the first three years of the Aging at Home strategy, yet its LTC wait list has increased by over 500 and the percentage of ALC patients occupying hospital beds is the second worst in Ontario.
  • Since 2006, $176 million health care dollars have been spent on administrative expenses at all LHINs, including nearly $11 million to run the North Simcoe Muskoka LHIN.

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