Five things experts say could ease pressures on Ontario's health-care system

Temporary emergency room closures and increased wait times have become increasingly common in Ontario as the province's health-care system grapples with staffing shortages.

Premier Doug Ford has acknowledged that more can be done to ease health-system pressures, but his throne speech this week fell short of offering solutions to the problem.

The Canadian Press asked experts and advocates what they suggest to provide relief to Ontario's overburdened health system. Here are five solutions they proposed:

   1. Repeal Bill 124

Scrapping the law known as Bill 124 -- which caps wage increases for public sector contracts at one per cent a year for three years — is top of the list for the Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario.

Doris Grinspun, the association's CEO, said the law needs to be repealed to ensure nurses are adequately compensated for their work, which would encourage them to stay in the profession. She pointed to the rising cost of living in calling for higher wages.

Dr. Michael Warner, an intensive care physician at Toronto's Michael Garron Hospital, warned keeping the law in place could spur more public sector health-care workers to jump ship for private agencies, where they could earn more.

"(Bill 124) makes nurses and other public sector health workers who are subjected to this legislation feel devalued and it puts them in a position where they have minimal negotiation leverage, because there's a cap on their pay increase," he said.

"Though money is not the only thing, we've seen a migration of nurses, in particular from publicly funded hospital positions that are unionized, to private agency work."

The premier has noted that the provisions in Bill 124 expire and won't apply to the next contract negotiations, but has not said he would repeal the law.

   2. Train, register more workers

Experts say more people need to be registered and trained to work in health care to lighten the workloads of those currently in the sector.

Last week, Ontario's health minister directed regulatory colleges for nurses and doctors to develop plans to more quickly register internationally educated professionals.

But Grinspun, of the RNAO, said she's waiting to see what those plans entail and how quickly they fast-track the process, noting that the number of nurses "waiting on the sidelines" to be registered sits around 26,000. "The backlog needs to be dealt with immediately," she said.