Waitlist Deaths in Ontario Demand Solutions

With Ontario politicians talking about patients dying on waiting lists, think tank SecondStreet.org shared statistics today on patients who have died on surgical and diagnostic scan waiting lists. Since 2019-20, at least 44,753 patients have died on waiting lists in the country’s largest province.

 SecondStreet.org has been gathering government data across Canada on patients dying on waiting lists. The figures include everything from heart surgery to hip operations to cancer care and everything in between.

“It’s positive that we’re seeing politicians talking about Canada’s broken health care system,” said SecondStreet.org President Colin Craig. “But we also need to hear politicians commit to reform if we’re going to see the situation improve. Politicians have spent decades throwing money at the problem and hoping things would improve. That clearly hasn’t worked.”

Ontario Health data, obtained by Freedom of Information requests, shows the following waiting list deaths by fiscal year for surgical and diagnostic procedures:

 2019-202020-212021-222022-232023-24
Surgical 986 1,096 1,417 2,096 1,935
Diagnostic 5,5346,941 7,397  9,404 7,947
TOTAL: 6,5208,037 8,814  11,500 9,882

Click on each fiscal year above to see the actual Ontario Health FOI response

“We’re seeing some positive health reform changes in Ontario, but we need to see a lot more,” said Harrison Fleming, Legislative and Policy Director at SecondStreet,org. “Public-private partnerships to deliver health care is one of those positive changes – although it’s not enough. The next Ontario government would be wise to copy what’s working in European countries that deliver better health care and shorter wait lists.”

Four solutions that parties could adopt to reduce waiting list deaths include:

  • Analyze and disclose how many patients died the previous year because the government took too long to provide treatment. This will help identify problem areas in the system and improve accountability.
  • Similar to Quebec and European countries, utilize “activity-based funding” to incentivize the health care system to deliver more services.
  • Copy the European Union by giving patients the right to be reimbursed for surgery in other countries. (the EU policy covers up to the same amount a home country would spend to provide treatment locally).
  • Continue to contract non-profit and other non-government clinics to provide services to patients in the public system. 
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