Skip to main content

Privatization of hospital surgeries through price based funding and wait times

The Regina Health Region has started to privatize dental and knee arthroscopy surgeries, turning procedures over to a private clinic.  The rationale?  To reduce surgical wait times.  Oh, and the government claims the knee surgeries will cost $1,500 apiece, $179 cheaper than in the public sector. The Saskatoon Health Region is also exploring providing surgeries in a private facility.

This from a province that until recently was a model of public health care delivery.

The Ontario Conservatives raised the same idea in the last election, with a similar rationale.  But the claims were shot down (as were the Conservatives). 

But the Ontario Liberal government had opened the door to this by introducing "patient based funding"  -- something that could be better described as "price based funding" or "fee for service".   Again, part of the rationale was specialized funding to reduce wait times for surgeries and diagnostic tests. 

Look for more attempts to introduce for-profit delivery through price based funding (under whatever name) and the rationale that it will reduce wait times.  There is plenty of profit to be made.


dallan@cupe.ca
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Huge cuts in public sector wages predicted

The Ontario Financial Accountability Office (FAO)   says  that, with inflation, real wages in the public sector will decline 11.3% over the three year period  2021/2 - 2023/4 .  This would radically deepen the trend towards lower wages during the last ten years.   The FAO reports that since 2011, the average annual salary for the Ontario public sector employees (defined here as employees of schools, colleges, provincial government, provincial agencies, and hospitals) has increased by $10,385   -- or 1.6 per cent on average annually.  This is the lowest increase of all the sectors and lower than inflation, which averaged 1.8 per cent per year. Over the ten years that would be about a 2% pay cut.   The FAO reports that wage settlements were the lowest in the provincial public sector over the last decade:   Hospital Wages Especially Challenged: The FAO predicts hospital wages will increase even less than in the public sector  -- just ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Too many public sector workers in Ontario?

Opponents of public services often try to portray the public sector as having grown disproportionately.  In fact, since 1976, the number of public sector employees has not quite kept pace with the population. In 1976, the number of public sector employees in Ontario  as reported by Statistics Canada averaged 830,800.  By 2012, the number had increased to 1,330,700 -- a 60.2% increase.  That sounds like significant growth -- true. But the population has increased  from 8,413,779 in 1976 to 13,505,900 in 2012, a 60.5% increase.   In other words, population growth has run slightly ahead of the growth in public sector employment.     In 1976, close to 10% of the population worked in the public sector.  It stayed pretty much this way until the Mike Harris government came to power when it dipped below 9%.  It returned close to the historical range in the last six years or so, declining in 2012 to below the 1976 averag...
16 comments
Read more

Are health care administrative expenses out of control in Ontario?

The Progressive Conservative government has justified its health restructuring plans with the claim that administrative expenses are much higher in Ontario than in Canada.  When introducing the reforms, health minister Christine Elliott  claimed , “Over the last five years, Ontario has spent 30% more than the Canadian average in administrative expenses on its health care system.”   Elliott did not indicate her source of information. Presumably, however, the Progressive Conservatives are referring to the CIHI simplified and user friendly “ Your Health System ” graphs. Those graphs show “administrative expenses” in Ontario at 5.8% in Ontario while it is 4.5% in Canada.   This CIHI measure is actually fairly narrowly defined. It is the percentage of “the legal entity’s” total expenses associated with the administrative, finance, human resources and communications functional centres. However “the legal entity” used for this estimate is [1] only...
Post a Comment
Read more