Skip to main content

Under-funding of Ontario hospitals and health care

Hospitals typically benchmark against each other to determine care levels and efficiency.  But when Ontario hospitals are bench marked against hospitals in other provinces, a pattern clearly emerges – under-funding and under-capacity.  This post will loo at under-funding, a later one will look at under-capacity

 Provincial hospital funding per-capita is 28.3% higher in the rest of Canada than in Ontario — $404.09 more per person per year. 

Hospital funding 2004-2018


The gap between Ontario and the rest of Canada is a relatively new phenomenon.  For decades we were in lock-step with the rest of Canada.  We have fallen far behind since 2006.

Ontario and rest of Canada provincial hospital funding 1975-2018
Provincial health care funding as a whole is 14% higher per person in the rest of Canada compared to Ontario.  That amounts to $561.08 higher per person, per year.  The gap in overall health care funding between Ontario and the rest of Canada developed at the same time as the gap for hospital funding developed.  Hospital under-funding accounts for almost three-quarters of health care under-funding.





In fact, Ontario provides the least health care funding per person of any province.  Below is a chart with the provincial government per person dollar funding since 2008 in real dollars (using constant 1997 dollars).  In 2017, real funding per person was still less than in 2008 — although the Ontario economy was about 17% larger than it was in 2008 in real terms.  The hysteria about the runaway health care cost is just that — hysteria.



 Two-thirds of this dollar cut came from cuts to hospital funding.  Between 2010/11 and 2017/18 real provincial hospital expenditures were cut 8.3%.



 That is a cut of $81 per person per year in constant 1997 dollars since 2010, or $128 per person in today's money.

 In fact, real provincial expenditures on hospitals are lower than they were in 1991 — despite very significant economic growth per-capita, an increase in the median age in Ontario from
33.3 years to 40.6 years, and a doubling of the population over 65 (with even bigger increases in the population over 85).

 Hospital costs per patient also going down:

All provinces hospital costs per standard patient

 In the four years from 2012/13 to 2016/17, standardized costs for a hospital stay (adjusted for differences in the types of patients) have fallen 2.6% in Ontario.  Ontario has the lowest cost for a standardized hospital stay of any province.


Ontario hospital expenditures are a lower share of the economy than 25 years ago:  Ontario provincial government hospital expenditure as a share of the economy has declined — not just since 2009, but since 1991.
Ontario health costs as percent of GDP

 Ontario has been through a period of health care austerity since the 2008 recession — ten years.  There are signs that the public believes it has put up with enough cuts.  Another period of cuts is not likely to be received well by the population.  
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

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

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...
Post a Comment
Read more