Ontario set to fund hip and knee replacements at private clinics
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The next step in Ontario’s plan to expand the number of private clinics offering publicly funded health care will take place early next year, with four centers offering hip and knee replacements, Health Minister Sylvia Jones announced Monday.
Ontario is spending $125 million over two years to add 20,000 orthopedic surgeries to community clinics.
The government has already expanded private delivery of public health care services for cataract procedures as well as MRI and CT scans, and said this included 40,000 eye surgeries and thousands of MRI and CT operating hours last year.
The expansion should ensure that 90 percent of patients get the procedures they need within the medically recommended time frame, up from the current 80 percent, Jones said.
Critics say the province should put that money into publicly funded hospitals, but Jones said it’s not an either-or situation.
“What I’m seeing is an existing operation that has literally hundreds of surgical and diagnostic centers that are operating independently in our communities, where individuals, where patients don’t have the luxury of traveling hours to get evaluations and, in some cases, critical treatments and now, surgical (procedures),” she said at a news conference.
“When we do that, we’re actually preserving the capacity that we have in our acute care hospitals, and we’re going to continue to make sure that our entire system is not only safe for the individuals and patients who need those services, but also that we’re building capacity.”
Ontario has more than 900 privately run clinics, which the government calls community surgical and diagnostic centers – mostly for diagnostic imaging.
The four clinics being funded for hip and knee surgery are OV Surgical Center in Toronto, Academic Orthopedic Surgical Associates of Ottawa, Windsor Orthopedic Surgical Center and Schroeder Ambulatory Center in Richmond Hill.
The non-profit Schroeder Ambulatory Center was the site of the final expansion announcement by Premier Doug Ford in June. In that round, the province said it was investing $155 million over two years to create 57 new centers for MRI and CT scans, as well as gastrointestinal endoscopy services.
