Premier Doug Ford’s government took another long-awaited step in its plan to allow more medical procedures in private health centres in Ontario.
On Wednesday, the province’s Ministry of Health announced it is now accepting applications from prospective private health-care providers aiming to perform orthopedic surgeries, such as knee and hip replacements. A ministry news release also promised that the province will spend $125 million over two years to cover the costs of “up to 20,000 orthopedic surgeries” at privately-operated surgical centres.
Since a few years ago, Ford’s Progressive Conservative government has been working towards expanding the role private diagnostic and surgical centres have in Ontario’s health-care system in an effort to ease the burden on the publicly-funded system.
The call for applications launched on Wednesday comes days after Ford and Health Minister Sylvia Jones announced the province would be issuing 35 licences to private centres, allowing them to conduct MRIs and CT scans, and 22 for gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopy services, “starting this summer.”
Bill 60, which the PCs passed in Ontario’s previous parliament in 2023, set up the private providers’ expansion. Under the law it created, centres that are granted licences are obligated to offer procedures to patients at OHIP rates, which the government will repay them for so that they remain taxpayer-funded. It also created certain rules meant to prevent patients from being upsold to procedures that wouldn’t be OHIP-covered.
Over the next two years, newly licensed centres will receive $155 million to perform 828,000 MRIs and CT scans and 420,000 GI endoscopies, the province announced on Friday.
The Health Ministry said in its news release that it’ll begin granting licences to centres to perform orthopedic surgeries in early 2026. Originally, the government said these licences would be granted last year. Its private provider expansion has been slower to complete than it first intended.
The province touted its plan Wednesday as one that would cut wait times for orthopedic surgeries, “ensuring that 90 per cent of Ontario patients receive care within clinically recommended timeframes.”
“While Ontario has the shortest surgical wait times of any province in Canada, we’re working to deliver even more connected and convenient care for people, when and where they need it,” Jones said in a news release. “That’s why our government is taking bold action to protect Ontario and boost access to publicly-funded surgeries and diagnostic imaging so families can conveniently access the care they need sooner and closer to home.”
Jones’ and Ford’s earlier announcement on Friday was held at the Schroeder Ambulatory Centre — a newly-built $350-million-plus private health facility in Richmond Hill, which has been licensed to perform MRIs and CT scans and GI endoscopies. The entirely philanthropist-funded centre plans to begin conducting these procedures in the fall.
The Schroeder Ambulatory Centre is expected to apply for a licence to offer orthopedic surgeries as well. In 2021, the driving force behind it, billionaire Walter Schroeder, pitched the centre’s “aim” in a TVO interview as including conducting “8,000 surgeries a year … equal to most of the Toronto hospitals in orthopedics.”
The Schroeder Ambulatory Centre has promised to follow a “strictly not-for-profit mandate,” by reinvesting “every dollar … to improve care.”
“The Centre acts as a backstop for public health, supporting hospitals and collaborating with referring providers,” the organization said in a news release on Friday. “We help reduce waitlists while adding efficient health system resources.”
In response to the Ford government’s Wednesday announcement, the official Opposition reiterated that it was opposed to plans to expand private medical clinics, with Leader Marit Stiles calling it a “deep concern.”
“I think it's gone beyond being the slippery slope … and the government is expanding it at a frightening rate,” Stiles said Wednesday.
“We have operating rooms collecting dust in some of our hospitals,” the Ontario NDP leader said, adding she wants to see more money going towards keeping operating rooms open in hospitals.
Stiles also said she thinks all of the surgical centres should be directly attached to a hospital.
“It's essential, or we're going to see things heading in a very bad direction,” she said.
