They used a number of stretchers outside Niagara Falls hospital
If you were at the Niagara Falls hospital on Portage Road this morning, you might have seen some stretchers outside.
The Ontario Council of Hospital Unions was using them to make a statement of the over crowding inside.
Union president Michael Hurley says there's 2,000 people on stretchers any given day health systems like Niagara Health. "In Welland, it takes 73 hours to move from a hospital stretcher to a bed, which is actually quite unbelievable. There's a quarter million people on wait lists for surgeries in the province."
He says he hasn't seen anything yet from the political parties on solutions in the election campaign.
He wants the government to keep Niagara hospitals open, not close them down.
As for the new hospitals being built, he calls them private. "By their very nature, because they're privately owned, because they're privately financed, their borrowing costs are higher. There are many costs associated with them, including profit taking. These hospitals wind up being about a third smaller."
Among solutions, he wants a ban on agency nurses to reduce staffing costs, and put that money to better pay and working conditions for existing nurses.
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