What's an extra $350 million? Deb Matthews, MOHLTC and Ontario hospital funding

Well, when the full Canadian Press story on hospital funding came out this morning, Health Minister Deb Matthews was cited as claiming hospital funding went up last year by 5.6%.

That's an awful lot more than previously reported.

The Accountability Agreements the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care signed with the Local Health Integration Networks set out an increase of $429 million (from $13.896 billion to $14.325 billion). That's an increase of only 3.08%. (For the 2008/9 and 2009/10 Accountability Agreements see here and here, pages 43 and 48.)

If correct, that's an additional funding increase of 2.52% -- or $350 million.

So, was the Minister misquoted, did she get her figures wrong, or did some extra money role in?

And if the latter, should we expect a similar bump up in funding this year as well?

dallan@cupe.ca

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