Social Policy in Ontario

Health workers deserve pay raise

Posted on April 11, 2016 in Health Delivery System

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TheStar.com – Opinion/Commentary – After 10 years of salary freezes, home-care professionals are fed up
Apr 10 2016.   By: Bob Hepburn, Politics

Two weeks ago hundreds of health professionals working in the home-care sector started getting notices from their employers telling them their salaries would likely be frozen again this year.

For many, it was the 10th straight year they have not received a pay raise.

The private companies at which these front-line professionals work also told them they would have to see more patients every day, complete more paperwork and improve patient satisfaction despite shorter visit times — all without any more money.

At the same time, top executives and managers at Community Care Access Centres (CCACs), the government agencies that fund and oversee home care in Ontario, enjoyed huge pay raises in 2015 — in some cases up to 15 per cent or more, and that’s on top of their salaries of more than $100,000 a year.

That’s not right!

Indeed, how can the CCACs justify giving their own senior employees whopping raises while telling private companies contracted by them to actually treat patients at home that the CCACs are cash-strapped and can’t afford to increase the rates they pay for each patient visit — for 10 years in a row?

The highly skilled professionals affected are nurses, dieticians, physiotherapists, speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists and more. Many have several degrees, including master’s degrees. All are dedicated; all care deeply about their patients.

In some cases, they earn as little at $35,000 a year.

The result of this wage-disparity insult is that many professionals are demoralized, burnt out and fed up. Their work has gone from being a calling to one of writing reports, completing data requests and having to tell patients they can’t visit them as often as is required for proper care because a CCAC manager has arbitrarily cut them off.

The CCACs’ refusal to increase the per-visit rates they pay to private service providers comes despite the government’s continued commitment to boost home-care funding.

Ontario now spends about $2.5 billion on home care, and has been raising its spending about 3-5 per cent annually. It allocates the money to the 14 CCACs across the province, leaving it to the agencies themselves to determine how the money is spent.

The CCACs argue the extra money is needed to handle more patients due to an aging population and the move by hospitals to discharge patients faster, leaving followup treatment once performed in hospitals to home-care professionals.

Private companies, who must compete against each other for CCAC contracts, claim it’s hard to offer pay raises when there’s no boost in the per-visit rates. Some employees are unionized, but most of the wage deals include raises ranging from zero to well below the rate of inflation.

In contrast, CCAC managers are getting regular, healthy increases.

For example, some 45 senior managers of the Central CCAC, which serves the area north of Toronto, including Richmond Hill, Newmarket and most of York Region, were paid over $100,000 in 2015.

Virtually all of them got raises last year, most between 5 and 14 per cent. For instance, senior patient service managers got pay raises of up to $7,000; the director of patient safety saw her income rise 14 per cent and patient services directors got raises up to $13,000.

Also, chief executive officers of the 14 CCACs saw their salaries jump an average of 2.8 per cent in 2015.

Health Minister Erik Hoskins, who is already expected to scrap the CCACs in a massive home-care system shakeup to be unveiled in May, reportedly is furious with the CCAC management pay hikes.

In an email statement, however, Hoskins said his ministry is “not a party to contract negotiations between CCACs and their service providers. CCACs manage the contract terms and conditions centrally with service providers.”

He added that his ministry knows that “service providers cover their fixed and variable rates from their CCAC revenues and we expect that as volumes increase, there may also be opportunities to manage fixed costs.”

Still, it’s a mystery why the health ministry has turned a blind eye while CCAC executives continually gave their own staff managers big pay hikes at the same time they were freezing rates for private providers.

Last year Hoskins rightly moved to boost the hourly pay for personal support workers, who were grossly underpaid. He should now examine the pay rates for all front-line workers.

As a first step, Hoskins should request an immediate freeze on raises for all CCAC executives and managers.

It’s time to stop this travesty.

< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2016/04/10/health-workers-deserve-pay-raise-hepburn.html >

Tags: budget, disabilities, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, standard of living

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