TORONTO - Health care advocates and opposition parties cried foul Wednesday after an overdue review of controversial provincial agencies that dole out $21.5 billion a year in health funding was postponed until after next year's Ontario election.
The Ministry of Health said it delayed the review of Local Health Integration Networks, originally scheduled for March, until July 2012 because the LHINs only assumed full responsibility for all health service providers last month.
That argument didn't fly with critics, who said the LHINs have angered people across the province by making crucial decisions about local health care -- including closing hospitals -- without consulting the public or even local health care providers.
"They're playing games," said Natalie Mehra of the Ontario Health Coalition, a citizens' advocacy group.
"By trying to duck and put off and evade the public's displeasure over deep hospital cuts and closures, the government is making it worse for themselves and delaying a desperately needed review of bad policy decisions."
The LHINs were created by the Liberal government in 2007 and a review was promised in legislation. The opposition parties said the government intentionally put off the review until after next fall's election campaign, and dismissed the government's explanation for delaying it.
"I think those are really bogus excuses," said Progressive Conservative health critic Christine Elliott.
"Obviously they want to hide it, they want to make it go away, but we think it's important people understand what's going on here, that the government totally abdicated responsibility for oversight of the LHINs."
The New Democrats said the Liberals have to take responsibility for the anger and confusion created by LHINs for making critical health care decisions without properly consulting the affected communities.
"They set these animals up, then they let them loose and they're running amok, and the Liberals are not prepared to put together a process to bring them under control," said NDP Leader Andrea Horwath.
"The government needs to lose some of their arrogance and recognize that people are rightly concerned about the LHINs."
Premier Dalton McGuinty spoke Tuesday about abandoning the review of the LHINs completely in favour of making changes as needed.
"There a couple ways we can deal with this: we can conduct kind of a holus-bolus review at one point in time or continue to make changes as and when required, and that's what we've decided to do for the time being," McGuinty said.
An aide for the premier later clarified that a review of the LHINs was required under the legislation that established the agencies in 2007.
The LHINs were severely criticized Tuesday by the province's ombudsman for holding secret meetings to discuss restructuring health services and closing emergency rooms, shutting out the public.
The secret meetings started with the Hamilton-area LHIN, which passed an "illegal" bylaw to allow itself to meet behind closed doors, and quickly spread "like hogweed" to communities across Ontario, said Ombudsman Andre Marin.
Creating the LHINs in 2007 allowed the government to distance itself from difficult decisions, said Marin, but "the reality of community decision making has fallen far short of the political spin."
The LHINs have come under fire from residents upset with a lack of input on hospital restructuring plans in many communities including Peterborough, Cobourg, Hamilton and Niagara.
The ombudsman has received complaints about a plan by the North East LHIN to shut 31 mental health beds in North Bay and move them 130 kilometres to Sudbury, but hasn't decided if he will conduct an investigation.
The Ontario Health Coalition held hearings on the LHINs across the province and found a "deep hatred" for the agencies and their failure to consult local residents about crucial decisions about health services in their communities, said Mehra.
"Our whole panel was shocked at the level of public ire at the kind of high-handed, poor decision making that's going on," Mehra said.
The coalition and the Progressive Conservatives said it's time to scrap the LHINs altogether, while the NDP called for a moratorium on all hospital restructuring plans until the LHIN review is completed.
