Media Advisory - Campaign against cuts at Pembroke Regional Hospital begins with community postcard campaign

PEMBROKE, ON, June 30, 2015 /CNW/ - Staff of Pembroke Regional Hospital represented by CUPE are kicking off a community campaign to protest plans to cut beds and privatize services. "Our campaign will ask the provincial government for additional funding for the hospital to stop the bed closures and to intervene in the contracting out of the sterilization of surgical instruments," says Cindy Schulz, president of CUPE local 1502.

The Pembroke Regional Hospital has closed 5 beds due to a budget deficit. Ontario has frozen hospital funding for 4 years. Estimates cited by the Auditor General calculate that hospitals need a 5.8% increase annually to meet their basic costs. Ontario spends the least on its public hospitals of any province in Canada and has the fewest beds to population of any province.

The hospital is planning to contract out sterilization of surgical instruments to a Toronto area company. "Unfortunately the experience with this company is not positive, with blood and bone matter returning on instruments which have been inadequately cleaned to at least one major hospital they service. A regional hospital, 500 km from the proposed sterilization facility, should have its own independent sterilization capacity," says Michael Hurley, president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions/CUPE. 

Downsizing and closing hospitals, cutting beds and privatizing diagnostic and clinical services have been central to the provincial Liberal governments health care changes. Hospitals in smaller communities are particularly threatened under this plan.

Plans include a postcard campaign directed to the Minister of Health, Eric Hoskins, and a rally to be held on July 7 at noon at the Pembroke Regional Hospital (705 Mackay Street) and a town hall meeting with the Ontario Healthcare Coalition.

SOURCE Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (CUPE)

Cindy Schulz, President, CUPE Local 1502: [phone]; Michael Hurley, President, Ontario Council of Hospital Unions/CUPE (OCHU): [phone]