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The next step in Ontario’s plan to expand the number of private clinics offering publicly funded health care will roll out early next year, Health Minister Sylvia Jones announced Monday, with four centres offering hip and knee replacements.
Ontario is spending $125 million over two years to add up to 20,000 orthopedic surgeries at community clinics.
The government has already expanded the private delivery of public health care services for cataract procedures, as well as MRI and CT scans, and said that has involved 40,000 eye surgeries in the past year and tens of thousands of MRI and CT operating hours.
The expansion should ensure that 90 per cent of patients get those procedures within clinically recommended timeframes, up from the current level of 80 per cent, Jones said.
Critics say the province should instead be putting that money into publicly funded hospitals, but Jones said it is not an either-or situation.
“What I see is an existing operation that has literally hundreds of surgical and diagnostic centres that are operating independently in our communities, where individuals, where patients have that convenience of not having to travel literally hours to get assessments, to get, in some cases, vital treatments and now, surgical [procedures],” she said at a news conference.
“When we do that, we actually preserve the capacity that we have in our acute care hospitals, and we’ll continue to make sure that our entire system is not only protected for individuals and patients who need those services, but also that we are building capacity.”
Ontario has more than 900 privately operated clinics, which the government calls community surgical and diagnostic centres — mostly for diagnostic imaging.
The four clinics being funded for hip and knee surgeries are OV Surgical Centre in Toronto, Academic Orthopedic Surgical Associates of Ottawa, Windsor Orthopedic Surgical Centre and Schroeder Ambulatory Centre in Richmond Hill.
The non-profit Schroeder Ambulatory Centre was the site of an announcement in June by Premier Doug Ford on the last expansion. In that round, the province said it was investing $155 million over two years to create 57 new centres for MRI and CT scans, as well as gastrointestinal endoscopy services.
