Hamilton's hospitals are bursting at the seams.

Two of the city's adult acute care hospitals are far over capacity while the third is close to full.

Overcrowding is the worst at Juravinski Hospital on Concession Street, which has eight per cent more patients than funded beds. St. Joseph's Hospital on Charlton Avenue East is at 103 per cent capacity while Hamilton General on Barton Street East is at 99 per cent.

A capacity of about 85 per cent is ideal for hospitals.

"Ontario's hospitals are living in almost a permanent state of crisis having been pushed by years of cuts into levels of overcrowding that are dangerous to both patients and staff," said Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition. "In fact, there is no jurisdiction that I could find that has higher levels of overcrowding."

The hospitals blame the problem on beds blocked by patients waiting for other types of care. Juravinski alone has 18 per cent of its beds blocked.

But the coalition points the finger at years of cutbacks as hospitals struggle to balance their books with budgets frozen by the province. It released a report Thursday claiming one in four Ontario hospitals is facing significant cuts or is at risk of closure.

Hamilton General, St. Joseph's and West Lincoln Memorial in Grimsby were among the 51 "code red" hospitals out of more than 200 across the province.

"A freeze is a cut because everything continues to go up in cost," said NDP leader and Hamilton Mountain MPP Andrea Horwath. "It's unsustainable."

St. Joseph's needs to find $20 million in cost savings to balance its roughly $600-million budget in the fiscal year that started April 1. HHS has been cutting $25 million a year from its $1.2 billion budget.

"It's hard," said Kevin Smith, CEO and president of St. Joseph's Health System. "I'm not going to suggest that finding that much money every year is easy, especially in efficient hospitals."

But he points out care is shifting from hospitals to the community.

"We're cutting in hospitals and we're trying to invest in community," said Smith. "It is absolutely what our patients tell us they want."

In addition, St. Joseph's plans to make up the cash shortage by replacing high cost staff such as registered nurses with lower cost staff such as registered practical nurses when appropriate. Cutting 58 RN positions is one reason St. Joseph's is on the code red list.

Large hospitals like Hamilton's "count among the most overcrowded in the province," says Mehra, because smaller hospitals have no room for patients stable enough to go back to their own communities.

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"Many hospitals in larger communities in Ontario are operating at 100 per cent capacity or more," she said. "That means all the beds are full and the patients are lined up in stretchers down hallways … It means surgeries have to be cancelled because there are no beds for patients to recover in. It means emergency departments back up … It means ambulances are taken off the road waiting to offload patients."

To see the coalition report, go to www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/