Ontario’s Long-Term Care Minister, Merrilee Fullerton, is completely right when she says the Ford government didn’t create the healthcare crisis that sees the shortage of home-care services and long-term care beds result in dangerously overcrowded hospitals.

It’s a problem that’s been many years in the making.

But it’s also true that the Ford government has wasted more than a year when it had the power to do something about it. Indeed, it has made things worse by focusing on a politically motivated and nebulous overhaul of the health-care system rather than quickly moving ahead with what we already know are the fixes to hallway medicine: more home-care services and long-term care beds.

The minister continues to say there are “34,000 Ontarians on wait-lists” for beds in a long-term home. And that’s what causes such crowding in hospitals that some patients are left in chairs because there are no beds and doctors treat others in hallways and storage spaces because there simply are no rooms.

All the while, too many of those hospital rooms are occupied by people who could be in their own home if more and better home-care service was available, or in a long-term home if there were more of them.

But, according to provincial data obtained by the Star’s Theresa Boyle, the number Fullerton is using is no longer even accurate. Provincial data now shows that Ontario has hit a record high, with fully 36,245 seniors waiting to move into long-term care homes.

That’s the equivalent of every single person in Brockville and Port Hope combined waiting for a bed in a long-term home. Or the entire population of both Stratford and Gravenhurst left in an expensive and unhealthy limbo.

It also means that for all this government’s talk about fixing a problem it keeps blaming on past Liberal governments, the situation is getting demonstrably worse, not better, on their watch.

Two weeks ago, another set of numbers that show how short the Ford government is coming in fulfilling its promise to end hallway medicine were released.

This past June was the worst June on record for hospital overcrowding since the province began collecting statistics more than a decade ago. The average wait to be admitted to hospital from an emergency department topped 16 hours, according to the provincial agency Health Quality Ontario.

That’s bad enough. But even more troubling is that the winter spikes that create havoc in emergency rooms are still to come.

Tackling the problems that lead to dangerously overcrowded emergency rooms and hospital hallways isn’t easy. It requires fixing many parts of the health care system all at once, ensuring better integration between the various health-care providers and patients and their families and, at least initially, increasing budgets to make it all possible.

But dealing with complex issues isn’t something the Ford government has shown any capacity for, on this file or any other from public health to autism to education. And charting a way forward on such issues is even harder when a government claims “efficiencies” are to be found around every corner and a core priority is reducing the deficit. That would be the provincial deficit that the Ford government inflated through questionable accounting practices and now reduces seemingly at whim.

Last week, Health Minister Christine Elliott announced $11 million more for home and community care to help reduce overcrowded hospitals.

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That’s the first, and perhaps only, real indication that this government is finally realizing this must be treated as an urgent capacity issue and not something to be fixed by shuffling the deck chairs.

There will need to be more announcements of that nature to stop Ontario from experiencing more worst-ever health care records.

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