Ontario's use of private clinics to ease surgical backlogs a 'lethal blow' to hospitals, say advocates

Healthcare advocates will ask Ontarians to vote on whether they want to see publicly funded healthcare in private clinics as part of a campaign against the provincial government's plan to expand some surgical procedures to private clinics. 

In January, the Ford government announced it will address surgical backlogs by transferring procedures like cataract surgeries to private clinics across the province, starting with three in Windsor, Waterloo and Ottawa. 

The services will be funded through OHIP, but healthcare advocates warn it could be devastating for public hospitals to funnel public funds to for-profit clinics. 

"It's really kind of a lethal blow to public hospitals, especially the medium sized and small hospitals across Ontario," said Jim Stewart of the Waterloo Region Health Coalition, the local chapter of the Ontario Health Coalition, a public healthcare advocacy group. 

"We don't believe that that's the right way to proceed because what will happen to the public hospitals when we have 50 per cent of all the surgeries permanently removed from the hospitals and transferred to these private clinics?" he said, adding that Grand River Hospital and St. Mary's General Hospital in Kitchener will see impacts. 

Stewart said the funding associated with those procedures will also be removed along with nurses, doctors and medical technicians who perform procedures like cataract surgeries.

Cataract surgeries have the highest wait times 

The first step in the province's three-step plan to expand medical procedures to private clinics is cataract surgeries, followed by diagnostic testing and then hip and knee replacement surgeries in the third phase of the plan in 2024. 

In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Minister of Health Sylvia Jones said, "We are further leveraging community and surgical diagnostic clinics to eliminate the surgical backlog and reduce wait times to connect Ontarians to more convenient care closer to home." 

The province also said cataract surgeries has one of the longest waits for procedures in Ontario, and Windsor, Kitchener-Waterloo and Ottawa were chosen because of higher than average wait times for these surgeries. 

Stewart said instead of using private clinics, the province should maximize existing public resources and facilities to reduce surgical backlogs. 

"Mr. Ford has created the status quo by severely starving our hospitals of funding, by applying wage suppression legislation that's driving our nurses out of the hospitals," Stewart said. 

The Ontario Health Coalition's new campaign hopes to gather support from people across the province. Next month, anyone over the age of 16 can participate in the Ontario Health Coalition's referendum campaign. 

"We want to give the province of Ontario the opportunity to vote on this," Stewart said. 

The Ontario Health Coalition will run 1,000 polling stations across the province on May 26 and May 27. The ballot question is: Do you want our public hospital services to be privatized to for-profit hospitals and clinics, yes or no? 

Votes will then be counted and presented during a press conference later that month. 

"So we're really hoping that with 1,000 polling stations that we're going to get up to one million people saying, no, we do not want our hospital services, our core services to be privatized," Stewart said.