Skip to main content

Ontario cuts cataract surgeries by 10%




A senior director of the North East LHIN has told the North Bay Nipissing that the government cut cataract surgeries by 10% across the province this year.  This has forced the North Bay Regional Health Centre to stop such surgeries until April 1 (the beginning of the fiscal year).  Another recent report indicates that the Hotel Dieu in Kingston is now performing 10 cataract surgeries per week until the end of March -- down from 60 per week.

While, in the past, global funding allowed local hospitals to determine local needs, the government's new "fee for service funding" (aka "patient based funding") gives all that power to the province.  For some reason, Toronto decided to cut 10% across the province, it seems.  

Local decision making anyone? 

Moreover, where was the public discussion (or even notification) of this decision?  We are almost at the end of the fiscal year, and this is the first that I, at least, have ever heard of a decision to cut cataract surgeries by 10% this year.  
Labels:

Comments

  1. LeftwordsFebruary 25, 2013 at 1:05 PM

    The Ottawa Citizen offers this explanation from the Champlain LHIN CEO, Chantale LeClerc, for the cuts to cataract surgeries in a news story today:

    "Though Eastern Ontario hospitals are performing fewer cataract surgeries than they did last year - they've dropped from 11,400 to a projected 9,800 at The Ottawa Hospital, for example - Le-Clerc said wait times have increased only slightly.

    "That's because the numbers in the past few years were inflated by extra spending designed to reduce wait times, she said. The provincial average is now 132 days, well below the government's 182-day target."

    ReplyDelete
  2. hunterJanuary 24, 2014 at 5:19 AM

    Hi
    this is really very helpful article. I go through this site really very nice information.thank for sharing such a nice information.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ford government fails to respond to 72% increase in COVID inpatient days, deepening the capacity crisis

COVID infections continue to drive up hospital costs and inpatient hospitalizations in Ontario. For the most recent fiscal year (April 1, 2022- March 31, 2023) hospital stays related to COVID cost $1.221 billion, according to new CIHI data.   This is about 4% of total hospital spending, creating a very significant new cost pressure beyond the usual pressures of population growth, aging, inflation, and rising utilization.   Costs for COVID related hospitalizations increased 22.2% in Ontario in 2022/23 from the previous fiscal year, rising from $999 million to $1.221 billion.  That rise is particularly notable as the OMICRON spike of late 2021 and early 2022 had passed by the the 2022/23 fiscal year.   The $222 million increase in COVID hospitalization costs came in the same year as the Ford government cut special COVID funding and, in fact, cut total hospital funding by $156 million.     In total, there were 60,653 COVID hospitalizations...
Post a Comment
Read more

The long series of failures of private clinics in Ontario

For many years, OCHU/CUPE has been concerned the Ontario government would transfer public hospital surgeries, procedures and diagnostic tests to private clinics. CUPE began campaigning in earnest against this possibility in the spring of 2007 with a tour of the province by former British Health Secretary, Frank Dobson, who talked about the disastrous British experience with private surgical clinics. The door opened years ago with the introduction of fee-for-service hospital funding (sometimes called Quality Based Funding). Then in the fall of 2013 the government announced regulatory changes to facilitate this privatization. The government announced Request for Proposals for the summer of 2014 to expand the role of "Independent Health Facilities" (IHFs).  With mass campaigns to stop the private clinic expansion by the Ontario Health Coalition the process slowed.   But it seems the provincial Liberal government continues to push the idea.  Following a recent second...
Post a Comment
Read more

The hospital crisis: No capacity, no plan, no end

While Canada has achieved universal public healthcare coverage, that does not mean conservative forces have given up trying to erode that coverage and expand corporate care where it does not currently exist. The battle has become particularly intense in Ontario under the Ford Progressive Conservative government, which is implementing serious cuts to the level of care and moving to bring in for-profit mini-hospitals. Inadequate Staffing.   Less and less of hospital spending is on staff.   Employee compensation as a share of hospital expenditures has consistently shrunk in Ontario. This is not some immutable law of hospital development.  It is in stark contrast with the rest of Canada, where compensation has become a larger share and now accounts for 67.1%. Hospitals in provinces other than Ontario now have 18 percent more staff per capita than hospitals in Ontario. Overall, if Ontario had the same staffing capacity as the other provinces and territories, there would be another...
Post a Comment
Read more