Are hospitals primarily providers of acute care?

Hospitals are often stereotyped as providers of acute care services. In fact, acute care accounts for a relatively small portion of total hospital services.

As noted a few days ago, costs per acute care patient (or, more exactly, per "weighted case") in Ontario are significantly below the national average, coming in at $5,174 in 2010-11 (and $5,184 in 2011-12). There was 1,484,046 weighted acute care (and newborn) cases in 2010-11 in Ontario. So the total acute inpatient cost is about $7,678,454,004.

In 2010-11, the total hospital sector expense (funded from both government and other sources) was $20.6 billion according to figures in the 2010 Budget.

As a result, acute care spending amounts to only 37.2% of all hospital spending.

In other words, acute care is a significant part of hospital activity --but it is in a decided minority in overall scheme of things going on at hospitals.

Good news for P3 privatizers, Ontario's privatized P3 Highway, the 407, saw profits increase 85% to $76 million in the second quarter of this year. That's on revenue of only $205 million.

Not too bad (for them).

Here's the bad news for us, however. Revenues increased thanks to an 8.6% increase in the per trip costs.

The P3 is operated by a subsidiary of Ferrovial SA, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and SNC-Lavalin (the latter was recently caught up in a major P3 hospital scandal in Montreal, which saw the arrest of its former CEO).

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