There has been a 31 per cent decrease in avoidable deaths in hospitals since 2006, according to an analysis of data from both the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) and the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU).

Between 2006 and 2008 there were a recorded 71,335 “avoidable” deaths in Ontario hospitals, according to CIHI’s data. That number had dropped to 26,070 by 2013. OCHU found that in 2016 that number had fallen even more, hitting 3,200.

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement defines avoidable deaths as deaths resulting from hospital errors.

However, OCHU blames cuts to healthcare funding and understaffed hospitals.

“Underfunding leads to understaffing,” Michael Hurley, OCHU’s President, says, “That leads to cutbacks in cleaning and that leads to overcrowding.”

Hurley cites overcrowding as the number one issue.

“Our hospitals in Ontario are more overcrowded than a lot of countries,” Hurley says, “The Ottawa Hospital is running at about 110 per cent capacity. Anything over 85 per cent is overcrowded.”

OCHU’s 2016 study found that most avoidable deaths are a result from diseases contracted inside the hospitals themselves, such as C. difficile (C. Diff), a disease that commonly affects elderly people in hospitals for other medical issues.

“You have patients sharing bathrooms,” Hurley says, “That’s the biggest thing that contributed to the C. difficile outbreak in Montreal a few years back.”

Tim Martin knows C. diff all too well. His father, Robert Martin, died from the disease in 2013.

“He had broken his hip in the nursing home and been sent to the hospital,” Martin explains, “He was gone within a few weeks.”

Robert Martin had contracted C. diff from a patient a few beds down from him.

“It was a small, local hospital,” Martin explains, “They didn’t have enough staff, and the ones that were there were exhausted.”

Kelsey Delesalle, a Registered Practical Nurse, experiences that exhaustion every day, working in a geriatric ward.

“I was alone on my fourth shift at my current hospital,” Delesalle says.

That wasn’t the last time Delesalle was stuck working alone, either. She often finds herself flying solo due to someone calling in sick, or just simple understaffing.

“We’re probably understaffed because we’re not paid that well,” Delesalle says, “There’s not enough money to go around.”

There’s also not enough hands to go around. Some jobs definitely require two people, she says.

“Certain patients can be what we call one person care,” Delesalle explains, “But most are two. Especially for transfers. You need two people to just move them from their bed to their wheelchair, much less onto a stretcher or to the bathroom.”

However, despite apparent understaffing and underfunding, a September 2017 study by CIHI found that the amount of Canadian doctors has grown faster than the Canadian population for decades.

Between 2012 and 2016 the number of doctors in Canada was triple the civilian population.

CIHI found that in 2016 there were 84,000 doctors in Canada, which translates to 320 per every 100,000 patients – the highest ratio in history. The previous record-breaking peak had been in 1993.

Part of that growth comes from doctors immigrating to Canada from abroad, CIHI says. 58 physicians joined Canada’s workforce from abroad during 2016.

However, nurses and cleaning staff are in short supply, according to Hurley. And that will only change if hospitals receive more funding.

“They’re still cutting the budget,” Hurley says, “We need funding that reflects the growth of our aging population.”

In the end, it all comes down to the money.

2016 saw a flood of immigrants settling in Ottawa’s Barrhaven neighbourhood, according to data from the 2016 Immigration Census.

In 2011, Barrhaven saw around 2500 immigrants, while in 2016 there were just over 4000. That’s an increase of 61 per cent. Barrhaven has a population of around 70,000, as of 2011.

That flood of newcomers has prompted the Barrhaven community to open its arms.

The Ottawa Chinese Community Service Centre (OCCSC) puts on the Barrhaven Community Welcome Fair every year, where local businesses show up and help welcome newcomers to Canada.

The OCCSC was founded in December 1975 to satisfy a growing need to support Chinese immigrants.

Despite that, half of the people in the programs OCCSC offers aren’t Chinese, Robert Yeung of OCCSC says. OCCSC helps any and all newcomers to Canada, extending their language and employment services to all.

It’s not just the OCCSC that’s helping Canadian newcomers. The Ottawa Community Immigrant Services Organization (OCISO) is also helping immigrants to the Ottawa area.

Dragana Mrdjenovic is the Settlement and Integration Manager at OCISO. She helps Ottawa immigrants to get their bearings and settle seamlessly into their chosen communities.

Mrdjenovic knows exactly how immigrants feel.

“Moving to a completely new country is a risk,” Mrdjenovic says.

Mrdjenovic immigrated from Serbia nearly 30 years ago.

Mrdjenovic also has experience with employment counseling and helps new Canadians to find jobs, or even start their own businesses.

Entrepreneurial immigrants aren’t an oddity, either. Ottawa presents an Immigrant Entrepreneur Award every year to celebrate a select business owner.

Barrhaven’s own Ysabel Li-Lopez, founder of Nurture-Elle, a company that creates nursing products for pregnant women, is an immigrant from Peru. She won the award in 2013.

The number of new permanent residents to Canada will increase dramatically in the next three years.

Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen and the Liberal Government propose welcoming 310,000 new residents in 2018, 330,000 in 2019 and 340,000 in 2020 for a grand total of about 1 million by 2020, according to the 2018-2020 Immigration Levels Plan.

Ottawa 311 received 75 calls about Pit Bulls from January-August 2017 compared to 85 during the same months in 2016, according to an analysis of data from the city. Despite the drop, Ottawa’s Breed Specific Legislation (BSL) remains.

Pit bulls, and other similar breeds, have been prohibited in Ontario since 2005 due to BSL. Residents are not allowed to own, breed, or sell bull-type dogs. But there’s been speculation in Ottawa as to whether or not the ban is really worth it.

Roger Chapman, Ottawa’s bylaw chief, said in an interview with Metro News last year that it’s too costly to enforce the breed ban. Especially because only around 2 per cent of Ottawa’s annual dog bites are from pit bulls, according to Chapman.

From January-August this year, 369 311 calls were about dog bites, but only 75 calls fell into the specific Pit Bull category, which also includes simple sightings of the breed. Groups advocating for an end to the BSL use that fact, among others, to fight the ban.

Sit With Me is an Ottawa based rescue that currently has multiple pit bulls in its care, all of which can only be adopted by someone living outside of Ontario.

Ashley Ladouceur from Sit With Me, says that the issue of the BSL is near and dear to her heart. It poses many issues for the rescue, and for dog owners everywhere, Ladouceur says.

“It’s a very poorly applied bandaid for a much larger problem,” Ladouceur says.

About half of the dogs at Sit With Me right now are pit bull type breeds, and none of them can be adopted into Ottawa, or neighbouring Montreal, due to BSL.

“It’s not effective in any way,” Ladouceur says, “It’s just one of those things that politicians do to appease people who scream about dog bites.”

Those trained in canine behaviour don’t really see a point to BSL, either.

Julie Ott is the owner of Canine Foundations, a mobile behaviour consulting and dog obedience company. Ott is the Head Behaviour Consultant, specializing in dog aggression.

“It’s not increasing public safety,” Ott says of the BSL, “It’s a huge strain on our legal system and it’s not effective in achieving its goal.”

Located in the GTA, Ott says that the most common dogs she sees when dealing with aggression are not pit bulls.

“I see a lot of Mastiffs and livestock guardians,” Ott says.

Not only that, but she thinks pit bulls get a bad rep.

“They’re one of the most friendly out of the guardian breeds,” Ott says.

When the BSL was first introduced in Ontario, more than 10 years ago, many dogs were abandoned.

“We saw a lot of pit bulls being dumped,” Ott says, “Tied to doors and left behind. Shelters were full of them.”

And then different large breeds starting cropping up.

“There’s been an influx of larger, more unstable breeds since the ban has gone through,” Ott says, “Dogs that are nowhere near as human-friendly as the pit bull!”

It’s all about socialization, Ott says. Introducing dogs of all breeds to urban environments, along with other dogs, people, and children is the key to having a friendly, safe companion.

“That is what brings down the number of bite incidents,” Ott says, “Not banning breeds, but educating people on how to interact with dogs.”

Over 1 million Canadians visited hospitals in 2015 and 2016 due to concerns about potentially inappropriate medication prescribed to senior citizens, according to an analysis of data from The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI). Nearly 1 million of those visits, over 900,000, were in Ontario.

That number outweighs every other reason for a hospital visit in the CIHI data.

This isn’t the first time that seniors, and those that care for them, have become aware of the sheer number of prescription medications that seniors take.

65 per cent of seniors take 5 or more prescription medications, with that number growing with a patient’s age, according to a 2014 report by CIHI. 40 per cent of seniors 85 and older take more than 10 medications a day.

The Canadian Deprescribing Network (CaDeN) is investigating how many of those medications are really necessary.

Dr. Barb Farrell and Dr. Cara Tannenbaum co-created CaDeN, an organization aiming to phase out medication that is no longer needed or simply lower the dosage of some medications for patients.

“Stopping medicines not only made people feel better but started to make them live longer,” Dr. Justin Turner, CaDeN’s Assistant Director, said.

According to CaDeN, some medications can cause more harm than good as patients grow older or more ill.

Turner explained that the older a person gets the more medical conditions they often have to deal with. With each condition comes a set of guidelines on which medications to take.

“By the time you get the guidelines for those conditions, you’re on 15 medications,” Turner said.

In this case, more medicine does not always lead to a healthier body.

“A lot of people are in the hospital because while they were taking the right medicines, the medicines did not mix well together,” Turner said.

CaDeN works with healthcare professionals and patients alike to evaluate prescribed medications and decide which are necessary and which are not.

“70 per cent of older adults in Canada would be willing to stop their medications if their doctors told them to,” Turner said. The only problem is that most doctors don’t believe that’s true, according to Turner.

Ina Cox, 76, takes 6 prescription medications a day. She doesn’t even know what some of them do.

“The doctor told me I need to take them for different things, so I take them,” Cox said, “You assume they know best.”

Turner suggests that if patients want to take a stab at deprescribing, they start a conversation with their family doctor. It all comes down to the patient to get the ball rolling.

Turner does stress, however, that consulting with your family doctor is of the utmost importance when attempting to lower the dosage of a medication, or stop taking it altogether.

The overmedication of seniors isn’t just a Canadian issue. In the United States, seniors account for less than half of all hospital stays, but the majority of their visits revolve around complications with their medications, according to a 2014 action plan by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

In the end, it all comes down to patients and their individual needs.

“I really started to notice that when we focused on individual patients and what their needs are – we could stop a lot of their medicines and they felt better,” Turner said.