Skip to main content

Hospital funding increase: more than it appears

The headline remains the same as last year's: hospital funding will increase 1.5% in 2011-12.  But buried in Table 20 of Chapter II  of the Ontario Budget is the fuller story: total hospital funding is expected to increase 4.7%.


TABLE 20. Selected Expense Risks and Sensitivities
Program/Sector2011–12 Assumption2011–12 Sensitivity
Health SectorAnnual growth of 4.3 per cent.One per cent change in health spending: $476 million.
Hospitals' Sector ExpenseAnnual growth of 4.7 per cent.One per cent change in hospitals' sector expense: $212 million.
Drug Programs UtilizationAnnual growth of less than 4.8 per cent.One per cent change in program expenditure of all drug programs: $43 million (seniors and social assistance recipients).
Long-Term Care Homes77,800 long-term care home beds. Average Provincial annual operating cost per bed in a long-term care home is $48,300.One per cent change in number of beds: approximately $38 million.
Home CareApproximately 20 million hours of homemaking and support services.
Approximately 8 million nursing and professional visits.
One per cent change in hours of homemaking and support services: approximately $6 million.
One per cent change in nursing and professional visits: approximately $6 million.



The 1.5% increase that the media highlights refers only to the "base" (or "global") hospital funding increase. Sadly, the government has moved away from funding hospitals through global funding increases, preferring instead to dole out special surprise funding announcements throughout the year, with lots of local media attention.


In fact, by far the largest part of hospital funding will come through these one-off  announcements to local media.  That will play especially well during an election year.


Look in particular for announcements bailing out hospitals with big debts.  The government announced  in Chapter I of the Budget that it will set aside $600-$800 million over the next three years for that purpose.  This alone should amount to somewhere between a 1 % and a 1.3% increase in total hospital funding in each of the three years - almost as much in each year as the 1.5% global funding increase announced for this year.




dallan@cupe.ca

Comments

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...

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...

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...