BURST
Ontario hospitals will face tough choices in the next few years that will likely affect the services they offer, the Ontario Hospital Association is warning.
That could include program consolidations affecting services to patients, closure of some non-core hospital inpatient services and spending reductions in core services.
Anthony Dale, president and CEO of the organization that represents Ontario’s public hospitals, painted a grim picture of the strain on the province’s hospitals during pre-budget consultations Friday.
Many hospitals are grappling with significant challenges, Dale told MPPs.
“Many are projecting year-end deficits, have eroded their working capital and, in the absence of certainty about their revenues, cannot properly plan for the future,” he said.
Costs for hospitals have been going up by about six per cent a year due to population growth, aging and inflation, Dale said. In recent years, the hospital sector has received funding increases from the provincial government of around four per cent.
As a result, Dale said, Ontario’s hospital sector has a “persistent and deepening structural deficit of approximately $1 billion.”
Long-standing issues such as outdated funding rates have left many hospitals with the kind of debts “that efficiencies cannot resolve,” he added.
Dale’s comments come as Ontario’s hospitals are taking part in a process to find efficiencies, working with provincial officials and other hospitals, in order to balance budgets over the next three years. Those Hospital Sector Stabilization Plan exercises have found some initial “clinical, operational and administrative costs savings and cost-avoidance measures,” Dale said.
But the exercise has underscored the fact that small efficiencies are not enough to help hospitals dig out of the holes they are in.
“These measures alone will not address system pressures,” Dale said.
He also said hospitals were preparing to make difficult decision over the next few years.
“Ontario hospitals are already the most efficient in Canada. The HSSP (Hospital Sector Stabilization Plan) exercise proves that further significant cost-saving measures would like include program consolidation with service impacts, closure of non-core inpatient services and spending reductions in core inpatient services,” Dale said.
“There is no easy choice ahead.”
He said hospitals would have to prioritize what they could do, make “trade-off” decisions and take action to operate with the more limited resources that would be available.
Many hospitals are being forced to treat growing numbers of patients in hallways and other unconventional spaces because there are no beds available, and some Ontario hospitals have cut health-care worker jobs.
Ontario has among the lowest rate of per capita hospital funding in Canada.
Dale said health care was foundational to a stronger, competitive economy. Even under strain, he said, hospitals are pursuing change and innovation in areas such as the use of artificial intelligence, gene therapy and the hospital-at-home model of health care.
He said hospitals needed predictable, multi-year financial planning assumptions for the next three years in order to plan for the future and to serve their communities.
“Hospitals are committed to doing everything possible to safeguard access to care,” Dale said.
During pre-budget consultations, MPPs travel the province to hear submissions from organizations with budget recommendations. Among other organizations, several hospital officials have talked about the pressures they face and some of the solutions — such as new primary-care health hubs adjacent to their hospitals — that could ease the pressure.
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