Cost of hospital treatment is falling

Ontario has the lowest hospital cost per weighted case of all the provinces. And the cost difference between Ontario and the rest of the country is growing.

Hospital Cost Per Weighted Case ($)

	2009-2010	2010-2011	2011-2012
Newfoundland	6,001	6,283	6,332
PEI	DQ	DQ	5,257
Nova Scotia	4,998	5,403	5,384
New Brunswick	5,104	5,380	5,390
Quebec	4,455	4,550	4,728
Ontario	5,164	5,174	5,184
Manitoba	5,403	5,438	5,396
Saskatchewan	5,722	5,883	6,174
Alberta	6,139	6,399	6,631
BC	5,456	5,571	5,232
North West Territories	N/R	N/R	N/R
Yukon	DQ	7,709	7,394
Weighted Average	5,172	5,281	5,335

Source: Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI):Canadian MIS Database Hospital Financial Performance Indicators, 2007-08 to 2011-12. Note: comparable weighted case data not available prior to 2009-10 through this data base. Data reported unadjusted by labour rate. "DQ" - data quality issue. "N/R" – not reported. Year ending April. Cost per weighted case compares a hospital’s total acute inpatient care expenses with the number of acute inpatient weighted cases related to the inpatients that it provided care for. The result is the hospital’s average full cost of treating the average acute inpatient.

Ontario hospital costs per weighted case were just less than the Canada-wide average (including Ontario) in 2009/10 -- $8 less or 0.15%. But two years later they were $151, or 2.83% less.

Real Cost Decline: Hospital costs in Ontario have increased much less than inflation: going up 0.18% in 2010-11 and 0.21% in 2011-12. Inflation for consumers was far higher: 3.6% for the year ended April 2011 and 2.1% for the year April 2012.

The real costs of treating a hospital patient are falling.

Hospital cost increases across Canada were significantly higher than Ontario with a 2.1% increase across Canada in 2010-11 and a 1.0% increase in 2011-12. (Nevertheless, even these increases fell well short of Canada-wide consumer inflation of 3.2% and 2.0%.)

The lower costs in Ontario occurs despite higher living costs in Ontario. When labour rates are adjusted, Ontario hospital costs per weighted case are much lower than the Canada-wide average -- 10.8% lower than the Canada-wide average in 2011-12 ($598 lower). This is an increase from a 9.7% differential in 2009-10 ($474).

More tomorrow on changes in hospital administration and nursing.

Photo: a Roman hospital with some of the same problems as Ontario, Pallamaio.

Comments

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 ...

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...

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...

Defend Public Healthcare

Search This Blog