I agree 100% with your assessment re hospital beds - and that occurred under the 'leadership' of ALL 3 political parties here in Ontario so the blame falls on all of their collective shoulders.
As for addressing the issues. It takes 4yrs min. to start ramping up more nurses for example, so some low hanging fruit was not picked but a lot of the fruit is higher up the tree and harder to get to.
For example, in the late 80's early 90's it was common for the ENTIRE graduating nurses programme from U of W to be all hired up by hospitals in metro Detroit and for the 3-4 hospitals in Windsor to hire 0 from U of Windsor. I'm not certain much has changed 25yrs later.