Ontario spends relatively less on hospitals and more on drugs and doctors

The Ontario Hospital Association (OHA) has just released a fairly interesting report entitled The Changing Face of Ontario Healthcare. Here's what I draw from the report:

Provincial government health care spending in 2010 is $173 per capita less in Ontario than other provinces. That means $173 less for every person in the province for the year. And that means a saving of $2.3 billion province-wide.
All of this (and more) is accounted for by spending less per capita than other provinces on hospitals. Ontario spends $262 less per capita than the other provinces. In total that is a saving of $3.5 billion for all of Ontario.
The gap between what Ontario spends and what other provinces spend has increased every year since 2005 when the difference was only $86 per capita.
Unlike hospitals, Ontario spends more per capita than any other province on physicians: $192 more per capita than the other provinces. The gap between what Ontario spends and what other provinces spend has grown since 2005 when it was only $126 more in Ontario.
Ontario also spends more per capita on drugs, even a little more than Quebec which is the home of the brand name drug industry in Canada. Per capita, Ontario spends $61 more than the other province per capita. The gap has remained pretty constant since 2005.
Ontario would have to increase hospital spending by 3.5% to match the average of the other provinces. Notably, almost all of that could be achieved if physician and drug spending also matched what other provinces are spending.

The OHA report is brief and worth a read. It is largely based on data in the 2010 National Healthcare Expenditure Report from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).

dallan@cupe.ca

Comments

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...

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...

Paramedic Services in Canada: Structure, Privatization, Unionization and other issues

Governance and Funding : While police and fire services are usually municipal services, Emergency Medical Services (EMS) are typically controlled by provincial governments. In Ontario, regional municipal governments have responsibility for delivering and funding EMS. But even in Ontario the province plays a key role, strictly regulating EMS, providing funding for 50% of the approved land ambulance costs, and paying 100% of the approved costs for air ambulance, dispatch, base hospitals, First Nation EMS, and for territories without municipal government. Delivery : Like police and fire services, EMS is predominantly a publicly provided service in Canada. But businesses have now made some significant in-roads into EMS, primarily Medavie, a private corporation based in the Maritimes that describes itself as not-for-profit. Medavie goes back over 70 years, with its roots in health insurance. It still operates Medav...

Defend Public Healthcare

Search This Blog