Home to Southwestern Ontario’s largest hospital, London also is ground zero in the region for “hallway medicine,” patients marooned in hospital corridors awaiting treatment in an overcrowded emergency department, or a bed in an overcrowded ward.
On the Ontario election campaign trail this summer, Doug Ford vowed to end hallway medicine.
Forget it, warns a union representing 30,000 Ontario hospital workers.
Ford’s Progressive Conservatives swept into office in June seeking $6 billion in unspecified savings, money to be recovered, the party says, by reducing waste and inefficiencies across all sectors.
That was bad enough for prospects of ending bottlenecks in hospitals, says the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, the hospital division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees.