Privatization blunders bad for our health

Tinkering won't work, says OCHU.

from the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions

The outsourcing of chemotherapy drugs without oversight is just the latest in a string of health privatization blunders with serious consequences for patients, says Michael Hurley, president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions.

Hurley is urging Premier Kathleen Wynne not to simply tinker with privatization, but to bring health services back into the public domain.

Instead of committing to make privatization work better next time, Hurley urged the premier to "restore confidence in the health system by stopping outsourcing and privatization of hospital services encouraged by her government.  This is the remedy Ontarians need.  Tinkering with privatization just won't work.  Like our premier, public hospitals are accountable to Ontarians.  Private companies, even when they get public funding, are not."

While the affected hopsitals that had been using a private supplier for pre-mixed chemotherapy drugs are now mixing their own supply in-house, the premier "has not been proactive to ensure patient safety.  She has yet to order hospitals to stop contracting out services," said Hurley.

Ontario's health minister has acknowledged that there are questions about whether the privatization of the chemo drug supply was a factor in the dilution of the medication.

The independent investigation is important, said Hurley, but must include the role outsourcing played in the preparation of the chemotherapy drugs.

"We also need to know if public accountability for this serious medical error is being hampered by commercial confidentiality and fear of lawsuits," he said.

The private company contracted to provide the drugs is not licensed as an accredited pharmacy.

"Even those who support such privatization expect the government to have figured out basic oversight and public accountability before charging ahead with privatization of the health system," said Hurley.  "Surely that should have been a consideration before any contract was awarded.  It is cold comfort to the nearly 1200 cancer patients, 137 of whom have died, and their families, that the provincial government is now vowing to make health system privatization better when the problems with privatized services and contract transparency are already well known and profound."

While privatization of chemotherapy drugs is relatively new in Ontario, other privatization experiments have proven problematic, said Hurley, citing eHealth, ORNGE, and failed inspections at nine private clinics.

Outsourcing health care, he said, "is a colossal failure.  It adversely affects the quality of care and the safety of patients as well as the bottom line."

According to Hurley, Ontario paid 75 percent more to for-profit labs than to non-profit community labs over the past 30 years.  For-profit nursing homes have higher rates of ulcers, dehyration, malnutrition, hospitalization and other quality problems.

Hurley called for "an end to the culture of complacency that envelops the provincial government and allows it to brush aside major, systemic medical errors as though a blithe apology and a political out were all that is required when patients may be dying as a result of policies the province encourages, like outsourcing and cost-cutting."

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