the report<\/a>, the think tank describes a deepening hospital funding crisis in Ontario that is harming patient care and preventing hospitals from adequately meeting the health needs of the population.<\/p>\nAt the London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC), admission wait times have risen 38 per cent from 2020 to 2025, from 22.5 hours to 31 hours, according to a CCPA analysis. Provincewide, the figure rose 52 per cent to 44 hours.<\/p>\n
At the same time, the report says wait times for most patients to receive an initial assessment in an emergency department increased 67 per cent in the same period.<\/p>\n
“Ontario is really facing a lot of challenges in terms of providing hospital care,” Andrew Longhurst, a senior researcher at CCPA who authored the report, told CBC’s Afternoon Drive on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
“There is a capacity crisis, and that is due in large part to the funding that is determined provincially.”<\/p>\n
Longhurst said the report found a majority of Ontario hospitals have had operating deficits over the last three years, standing at 55 per cent in 2024-25.<\/p>\n
Hospitals in northern and western Ontario were more likely to be in deficit, and smaller hospitals were disproportionately impacted. LHSC had the largest deficit in 2024-25 at $153 million, a figure officials there say has fallen to just over $130 million this year.<\/p>\n
“We’ve also learned in the last few weeks that upwards of 70 per cent of Ontario hospitals will be in deficit in this most recent fiscal year that just closed off in March,” Longhurst said.<\/p>\n
“Rather than hospitals being in a position to think about, ‘How do we expand services? How do we reduce wait times?’ … Hospitals are having to think about, ‘How do we cut back? How do we remove services? How do we lay off staff?'”<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, LHSC said it would eliminate 212 registered nursing jobs over the next three to five years through attrition as part of a larger post-pandemic staff rightsizing. LHSC will simultaneously hire 108 registered practical nurses.<\/p>\n
David Musyj, LHSC’s provincially appointed supervisor, told a community update meeting last month that the staff headcount grew 25 per cent since 2019, while inpatient volumes rose 4.5 per cent, and outpatient volumes 11.4 per cent.<\/p>\n
While the province gave hospitals a $1.1-billion funding boost this year, the Ontario Hospital Association argued the need was more than double that and has urged the province to provide a $2.7 billion infusion to the sector.<\/p>\n
In its report, CCPA calls on the province to increase hospital funding by $3.2 billion and provide six per cent annual increases to account for inflation, population growth and aging.<\/p>\n
During last month’s community update, Musyj said the province had provided a roughly two per cent annual increase over the last two years \u2014 enough to offset inflationary pressures, but not enough to “address the structural deficit that our hospital has accumulated.”<\/p>\n
While the province has announced a four per cent funding increase, LHSC won’t know how much it will receive until later in the summer, he said.<\/p>\n
CCPA’s claims ‘misguided,’ province says<\/p>\n
In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Sylvia Jones, Ontario’s health minister, called CCPA’s claims “misguided” and pointed to the government’s $1.1 billion funding announcement, including a four per cent increase for a fourth year in a row.<\/p>\n
“At London Health Sciences Centre, for example, we have increased our investment by over 50 per cent since 2018. This funding is in addition to the hospital expansion projects that are underway in London, including an expanded surgical centre,” said Ema Popovic.<\/p>\n
Popovic added the province has added more than 100,000 nurses and nearly 20,000 new physicians since 2018, has cut the annual total volume of emergency department visits by nearly 200,000, and has the highest primary care attachment rate in Canada.<\/p>\n
The province has pledged to connect all Ontarians to a primary care provider in the next three years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[163,521,85,46],"class_list":["post-439696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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