How do we stop the erosion of health care?
As Ontario slowly emerges from five months of a provincewide lockdown, its time to look back at how far weve come  but also at the state of the road weve all been travelling on. Despite being framed as one of the best in the world, Ontarios health-care system continues to struggle. Decades of underfunding have made our collective journey this year more difficult than it needed to be. When Ontario entered lockdown again in April, those of us who work in the health-care sector supported this call: the OHA, the OMA, the MLPAO, and many others. All of us could see clearly how dangerously close we were to our capacity threshold. Rapidly rising COVID-19 cases could easily overwhelm our ICUs, testing centres and laboratories. One can trace the fractures in Ontarios health-care system back several decades. The Auditor Generals special report on COVID-19 Preparedness and Management last November found evidence of 25 years of chronic underfunding. Multiple governments have continuously failed to adequately support health-care workers and fund our health-care system. Legislators were informed of mounting concerns with funding, ICU space, disconnected health information systems, disjointed laboratory networks, surge capacity in the event of outbreaks, and much more. Instead, they chose to delay. SARS was a precursor into our current state  we were warned. COVID-19 has had a devastating impact for health-care systems across the globe. However, it has been far more severe in those systems which were weakened to begin with: so close to a breaking point that resilience is impossible. Ontarios COVID-19 pandemic response has been stumbling over chronic neglect of a health-care system left broken in too many places. 70 per cent of Ontarios medical laboratories entered the pandemic short-staffed. This too is a decades-old problem. Shortages of Medical Laboratory Technologists (MLTs) have been increasing each year since seven MLT programs were closed in the 1990s by the then-NDP government under the misguided assumption that instrumentation upgrades would reduce the need for MLTs. We are seeing a 46 per cent shortfall between open positions on the job market and the number of new professionals entering the field. 70 per cent of medical decisions depend on laboratory results, according to the CDC. Without medical laboratory professionals analysis of blood, tissue and fluids, physicians would be unable to diagnose and monitor infection, cancer, pregnancy, heart attacks and much more. Laboratory services indicate if prescribed medicine is working, what type of blood a patient requires, or if a virus is present. 43 per cent of practicing MLTs are eligible to retire in the next four to eight years. 86 per cent of laboratory professionals are experiencing burnout, exhausted after a year of constant testing. 42 per cent are contemplating early retirement/leaving the profession, or stress/sick leave . There are not enough MLTs to fill open positions, and more openings may remain unfilled with each passing year. Lab professionals care deeply about their patients. They do whatever they can to get the job done. However, teams dwindling further will begin to significantly impact the labs ability to function and provide timely results. The fact that they might no longer be able to operate without affecting patent care is concerning to laboratory professionals. It should be concerning to all of us. With articles about our COVID-19 response being shared by the BBC, Fox News, CNN and others, Ontario is now famous around the world for the wrong reasons. As we begin reopening, it is important to absorb the lessons of the past. While the road we have been travelling on this year would always have been tricky to navigate, we have been hindered by the decision-making of decades of provincial governments who have opted to delay instead of repair. We need to hold these governments accountable for their actions; not to point fingers, but to determine a path forward. Ontarios health-care system is full of incredibly hard-working professionals in dire need of resources and support. Laboratory professionals, nurses, PSWs, respiratory therapists, radiation technologists, doctors, porters and paramedics are tired after fighting a pandemic in a broken system. Deterioration happens gradually  through hundreds of postponements, budget cuts, inactions, cancelled funding, abdication of responsibility. While many of us wade back into a level of normalcy, lab professionals prepare for the next wave with the eventual resumption of surgeries. Our lives will go back to normal, but theirs never will. Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...