Wayne Gates
Special to The Lake Report

Recently, my office has been dealing with several serious issues regarding a shortage of medical home care supplies, affecting residents in Niagara and across the province of Ontario.

Just as recently as three or four months ago, things were running smoothly for home care patients, their families and caregivers, and the workers and companies who supply them with much-needed medical items.

However, in late September, the provincial government, under Doug Ford, launched new supply contracts for the delivery of medical items.

And the new system of supply contracts has had disastrous consequences for patients and their families.

There have been persistent service issues affecting the delivery of medical home care supplies.

Some of the key issues include an inconsistent and insufficient supply of products, which lead to patients being forced to buy supplies out-of-pocket, an erratic delivery schedule for supplies, poor packaging and labelling of supplies (which complicates the distribution of medical care to the correct patients), a reduced delivered volume (with often only five boxes delivered instead of the usual 20) and deliveries being sent to the wrong locations.

It’s gotten so bad that some of my constituents — residents here in Niagara who depend on home care supplies to meet their medical needs — are having to order their supplies off of Amazon.

Some patients are now ending up at emergency rooms and urgent care centers because of a lack of medication for their illnesses or pain.

Some palliative care patients have gone 30 hours without a pain pump. Some cancer patients have nearly run out of ostomy bags.

In my office in Niagara, I have a constituent, Diane, who relies on home care supplies daily.

At one point, Diane was down to less than one week of supplies — and she didn’t know what she would do once she ran out.

It’s outrageous that this has happened under the Ford government’s watch.

The system was working perfectly fine until the Ford government switched suppliers, which raises serious ethical concerns, and has created a disaster for patients and pharmacies.

This is completely unacceptable to me.

It’s bad enough the Ford government has created uncertainty and anxiety for our home care patients, and unnecessarily increased the pressure on our emergency rooms — but forcing people already dealing with an out-of-control affordability crisis to pay out of pocket for needed medical supplies is outrageous.

I have written directly to the Minister of Health on this issue, and I have questioned the government in the provincial legislature directly on these concerns.

I will not rest until we have these concerns addressed and fixed for our residents.

And frankly, it’s part of a pattern from the Ford government when it comes to our health care, long-term care and home care sector.

Recently, we learned that in our long-term care sector, the provincial government, under Doug Ford, failed to meet its own legislated targets for care for long-term care patients.

The government is claiming to work towards a standard of four hours of direct care per day per patient by next March — but it failed to meet the target of three hours and 42 minutes by March 31 of this year.

According to a government report, we need 13,200 additional nurses and 37,700 additional personal support workers in Ontario.

In order for residents to get the care that they deserve, we must address the staffing crisis in our health care and long-term care system.

Nurses and personal support workers need full-time jobs, with strong wages, benefits and pensions.

And the Ford government’s use of private staffing agencies, which charge our public care system hundreds of dollars per hour and worsen the staffing crisis, is exacerbating the problem.

Hospitals and long-term care homes spent nearly $1 billion in 2022-23 on private agency staff.

What we must do is number one, fix the home care supply crisis and return the operation of supply delivery to the way it was before, prior to Premier Ford creating this chaos in the system.

We must ensure every patient who has paid out of pocket for supplies during this period is fully reimbursed.

Next, we must invest in our public health care and long-term care systems and ensure that workers in these systems are treated fairly and paid appropriately for the work they do.

We must severely limit the use of private agencies in our public system.

Then, I am calling on the government to pass my motion to create a caregiver support benefit, to make sure that those who are working to take care of their parents, family, or friends who receive home care do not face financial hardship for supporting their loved ones.

Investing in our caregivers and our home care system will reduce the pressure on our hospital system and ensure that everyone in our community can get the care they need and deserve.

Wayne Gates is the NDP member for the provincial riding of Niagara Falls.