The Ford government is formally asking for new private health clinics to apply to enter the publicly funded health-care system as it ramps up its strategy to reduce wait times for surgery and diagnostics.
On Monday, the Ministry of Health said it was issuing a call for applications for new licences for clinics looking to offer publicly funded MRI and CT scans. There are currently seven clinics that provide either one or both of the services in Ontario.
The government said it hopes adding new clinics will create 100,000 more scans for people in Ontario every year.
Prospective clinics will submit a staffing plan to the province, details about how they will inform patients of their rights and obtain consent, along with how they will link to the existing public system.
A spokesperson for the government said there was not a specific number of clinics they were looking to license.
“The total number of new clinics will be decided based on the review of applications by the Director of Integrated Community Health Service Centres in conjunction with OH and the review panel,” they said.
The spokesperson said the locations of the new clinics would also be decided through that review.
The call for applications will end on Aug. 12, 2024, and the successful bidders will be announced in the fall 2024.
“Increasing the number of MRI and CT scans being done each year is the next step we’re taking to reduce wait times for more publicly funded surgeries and procedures, ensuring people get the care they need when they need it,” Minister of Health Sylvia Jones said in a statement.
The formal call for applications is the latest step in the government’s lengthy plans to add more private health-care providers to Ontario’s publicly funded system.
The plan — titled Your Health — was announced at the beginning of 2023, with legislation to support it passed during the spring. In the year that has followed, the government has been working through details of how it will manage oversight of new private clinics.
The government said Monday it hoped that new MRI and CT scan clinics would reduce the wait for the two scans to 28 days across the whole province.
“When it comes to wait times for surgeries and procedures, the status quo is not acceptable,” Jones said. “That’s why our government is taking bold action to boost access to surgeries and diagnostic imaging so that Ontarians can conveniently access the care they need sooner, closer to home.”
Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles said the addition of more private health-care to Ontario’s system could see people who want to use the public system pushed to pay more for private services.
“What we see over and over again with this opening and proliferation of privatized clinics is upselling,” she said. “What are they going to tell people that they need to pay for to get to the front of the line.”
The Ministry of Health said one of the new rules imposed on newly registered clinics would be that they cannot refuse to offer publicly funded services to people who do not agree to pay for upgrades.
Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie said the clinic expansion furthers the Progressive Conservative government’s “privatization agenda.”
“People will be going into these clinics with their credit card, not their health card,” she said. “Just one more step in the privatization of our health-care system.”
The government said it will launch two other calls for “community surgical and diagnostic centres that can connect people to GI endoscopy procedures and orthopedic surgeries” later in the summer.
— with files from The Canadian Press