Report advises Ontario government to scrap private surgeries and invest in public hospitals

WATERLOO REGION, ON –/COMMUNITYWIRE/– Drawing on new data from Freedom of Information requests, financial and statistical analysis, and research, a new report raises red flags about the Ford government’s privatization of our public hospitals’ core services including diagnostics and surgeries. The report, At What Cost? Ontario hospital privatization and the threat to public health care published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives lays out the negative impact of the Ford government’s plans for Ontario’s public hospitals and patients. It makes startling revelations such as the massive difference in stated government expenditures on private clinics versus the actual spending.

“Increasing surgical and diagnostic capacity depends on the availability of qualified staff, which is not magically increased by the addition of profit,” said Andrew Longhurst, political economist and author of the new report. “Ontario has the physical space and equipment to improve wait times for surgeries and medical imaging; what is missing is the health-care workforce and funding necessary to do the work.” Longhurst, a Simon Fraser University health policy researcher, is concerned that Ontario is set to repeat the mistakes of Alberta, a province that saw wait times increase and total surgical volumes decline as public funding and staffing were diverted into investor-owned centres.

“Today, 1,290 patients are on stretchers in hospital hallways waiting for beds. There are 170,000 patients waiting beyond medically recommended guidelines for surgeries, 17,000 of these are children. Of that 170,000, over 2,400 died last year waiting for surgeries and 9,000 died on waiting lists for MRIs and CT scans. 145 emergency departments are closed due to lack of staff,” added Michael Hurley, president of CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU). “The current Ontario government is promoting private hospitals and private surgeries, even though it is well documented that private hospitals have higher death rates and worse outcomes than public hospitals – and that private surgeries are much more expensive. This report details clearly why the government must scrap its campaign to reward its rich investor friends and instead do its job to properly fund our public hospitals.”

“Kitchener’s Grand River Hospital has 10 operating rooms, of which 2 are not in use – 1 is being used for storage. On any given day, seven or eight ORs will be in use in the daytime but then closed after 4 pm and used mostly only for emergencies in evenings and on weekends,” noted Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition (OHC). “There is a lot of unused capacity in the public hospitals to do tens of thousands more surgeries if they were only funded appropriately and staffed to do so. The government could – and should – have opted to expand public capacity in this way but instead is choosing to go the much more costly, dangerous, and slower route of expanding privatization.”

Ms. Mehra noted that on her way into Kitchener she called a for-profit cataract surgery clinic and was told it would cost $2,690. This is an example of the private for-profit clinics extra-billing patients illegally in violation of the Canada Health Act and Ontario legislation that hold that patients cannot be charged for medically necessary surgeries such as cataract surgery. However, the private clinics are doing it anyway, threatening public medicare in Canada.

Ontario has increased overall health funding by 1.2% this year, less than the rate of inflation of 5.6% – in economist terms “a real dollar cut.” However, the sky’s the limit for private clinics and hospitals. The new report reveals that the government has increased their funding for for-profit surgeries by 45% and public funding to the for-profit Shouldice Hospital and Don Valley Surgical Unit have increased 19% and 278% respectively since 2018, when the Ford government was elected.

The report finds that provinces that have the most for-profit clinics and hospitals (British Columbia, Quebec, Alberta) generally show poorer wait time performance than provinces with no or little to no privatization.

– 30 –

For more information, please contact:

Andrew Longhurst, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
andrew_longhurst@sfu.ca
604-362-6554 (cell)

Ken Marciniec, CUPE Communications
kmarciniec@cupe.ca
1-416-803-6066 (cell)

Salah Shadir, Ontario Health Coalition
ohc@sympatico.ca
647-648-5706 (cell)