MEDIA ADVISORY: Charter challenge by patient advocates filed against Ford government’s law overriding elderly patients’ right to consent & coercing them out of hospital

Attn: Assignment Editor

TORONTO, April 12, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Ontario Health Coalition and the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly (ACE) have made a major step forward in their Charter Challenge to Bill 7, passed by the Ford government last fall. The patient advocates filed a Notice of Application with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on Wednesday. The Application is supported by evidence from four expert physicians and a national expert in health services. The Coalition and ACE have been gathering evidence from patients and their substitute decision-makers which will also support the Application.

Bill 7, More Beds, Better Care Act, despite the title neither creates more hospital or long-term care beds, nor does it improve levels of care. It applies to hospital patients who are deemed “Alternate Level of Care” (ALC). It overrides elderly patients’ rights to privacy and informed consent, enabling hospitals and discharge planners to share their personal health information with an array of long-term care home operators or others. The law also enables hospitals and discharge planners to coerce patients to move to a long-term care home that they do not want to live in because it is unsafe, inappropriate or far away. If the patient refuses to move into such a home, they will be charged $400 per day. Under the legislation and its regulations, patients can be moved up to 70 km away in Southern Ontario or up to 150 km away in Northern Ontario (with an additional proviso that patients in the North can be moved even further away if there are no beds available within 150 km). For most of these patients, this move will be the last of their lives and they will pass away in the long-term care facility they are forced to move into.

When & Where:

Thursday, April 13

10 a.m. in person at the media studio at the Ontario Legislature
Main Building, Queen’s Park, Toronto,

and at 11 a.m. by Zoom. Register to receive the Zoom link here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0lf-yorDkuHtYW5lsZs_6BLgXomOTk60bR#/registration

Who:

Lawyer Steven Shrybman, Goldblatt Partners
Lawyers Jane Meadus and Graham Webb, Advocacy Centre for the Elderly
Executive Director Natalie Mehra, Ontario Health Coalition

For more information: Steven Shrybman (613) 858-6842; Natalie Mehra 416-230-6402 (cell); Jane Meadus (416) 995-7879 (cell); Graham Webb (416) 598-2656.