On Monday, GuelphToday ran a story titled Cases of ‘hallway medicine’ continue as Guelph General Hospital deals with city’s growth, in which the hospital's president spoke about bed shortages at times, the need to expand the Emergency Department and the need for more funding to address those issues.
The following is a statement by Laura Gallant, press secretary to the Minister of Health and Long-Term Care, which was emailed Wednesday to GuelphToday in response to the aforementioned article:
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Our hospitals have been facing increasing demands as a result of our growing and aging population. We know these demands are particularly felt in some of our most rapidly growing communities, including Guelph region.
In response, this past Fall, Ontario invested in the creation of 1200 new hospital beds across the province- equivalent to six new, medium-sized hospitals.
We have seen how valuable this additional capacity support has been to our hospitals, including Guelph General Hospital. That's why in January, our government announced renewal of this investment, increasing the new funding to our hospitals for expanded capacity for this coming year to $187 million. All hospital and LHIN partners were notified of this renewal of investments in increased capacity in January, and all LHINs and hospitals within their regions are working closely together on next steps to finalize allocations for this year. Together with the LHIN, we will continue to monitor any capacity needs, and the LHIN can adjust capacity allocations throughout the region as needed.
These investments are part of our commitment to invest an additional $822 million in Ontario’s hospitals in 2018-19- an increase of 4.6 percent- to continue to increase access to care. For Guelph General, this means an increase of $2.3 million in new funds this year, on top of the increase of $2.1 million the hospital received last year. The Ministry is also supportive of Guelph General’s request to renovate their busy emergency department, and will work with them through the planning process.
In addition to supporting our hospitals, we know that we must continue to invest in care in the community as well, so that those who no longer need to be in hospital can get care closer to home. That’s why the Waterloo Wellington LHIN is receiving 148 new long-term care beds as part of our government’s commitment to create 5,000 beds for our seniors over the next 4 years, and why we invested $193 million this past year so Ontarians can get the care they need at home- where we know they want to be.
We will continue to work with and support Guelph General Hospital and all hospitals across the province to ensure Ontarians have access to the care they need, when and where they need it.
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