CUPE plans to take action on behalf of seniors in the province over what its sees as a lack of access to acute hospital care.  The union is in the midst of a northern tour as it presents its report ‘Pushed out of Northern Hospitals, Abandoned at Home’.  The union says for nearly two decades the provincial government has aggressively downsized hospitals under the guise of shifting care from hospitals to outpatient services and CUPE Ontario President Michael Hurley says the community care services have not materialized.  That restriction of access has particularly impacted the elderly and especially those in rural and northern communities and that was reflected in the feedback they received for the report.  Hurley says seniors have been demonized with a broad characterization that they are inappropriately holding down acute care hospital beds and they are being pushed out of hospital settings…

The feedback was gathered through phone interviews and Hurley says a common theme was the challenge the elderly face when it comes to accessing acute hospital care…

The union plans on filing a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Commission…

The union points to an Auditor General’s report that calculated that hospitals need a 5.8% increase annually to meet their basic costs.