Few surgeries rerouted to private clinics in Ontario a year after announcement

In January 2023, Ontario Premier Doug Ford promised to expand the number of private clinics in the province in order to cut wait times.

He said he feared Ontario’s health-care system was in danger of being washed away if drastic action wasn’t taken.

“The way I can describe it, you have a dam, you have a log jam, are you going to just keep pouring the water up against the logs?” Ford said.

“Or are you going to reroute some of the water and take the pressure off the dam? You see what happens when the dam has too much water, it breaks.”

Just over a year later, new figures show the province has only rerouted a trickle of surgeries to private clinics in its attempts to take the strain off hospitals.

Data shared with Global News shows fewer than 10,000 more health-care operations had been moved into private clinics in the wake of the government’s changes.

In the 2021-22 year, a total of 18,500 procedures took place in private clinics — roughly 3.6 per cent of the provincial total. The next year, 2022-23, saw the number jump to 24,500, which represents around 4 per cent of the total.

The slow rerouting of some surgeries into for-profit clinics comes, in part, because the government has not yet finished the regulations that will govern the changes it announced a year ago.

Plans to move some surgeries out of hospitals began in earnest in January last year, when Ford announced a three-step plan to expand the private delivery of health care. The legislation to make the change a reality — Bill 60 — became law in May but regulations are still being written.

The first stage of the plan involved adding 14,000 cataract surgeries through new centres in Windsor, Kitchener-Waterloo and Ottawa. Four licences for three centres were issued by the province in 2023, with an increase taking effect relatively quickly.

Ontario also announced $18 million in existing centres across the province for MRI and CT scans, cataract surgeries, other ophthalmic surgeries, certain gynecological surgeries and plastic surgeries. Subsequent steps in the plan are set to include expanding the scope and capacity of private surgical and diagnostic centres, including more colonoscopy and endoscopy procedures

On Wednesday, Health Minister Sylvia Jones said a call for new private clinic licences would happen in the spring, with new regulations for inspections.

A spokesperson said the province was taking its time to make sure regulations worked.

“Our government is continuing to work with our partners to ensure the regulation process for Bill 60 is done right,” they told Global News.

“With the finalizing of the regulations, will come details regarding the call for applications for new centres, funding structure and staffing models.”

Opposition politicians, who raised concerns about the plan when it was announced in 2023, have continued to sound the alarm over the process.

Ontario NDP MPP Peter Tabuns told reporters he did not think the delays showed the government was taking its time to get things right but instead said he didn’t think the Ford government could “fix anything” in health care.

“They aren’t tackling the crisis,” he said. “I don’t think they’re as concerned about the regulation of these facilities as they are about getting them set up so that investors can make money off them.”

— with files from The Canadian Press

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