Ontario 360’s latest paper outlines how the Ontario government could draw on the experiences of other provinces to address increased surgical and diagnostic backlogs caused by the pandemic.
The paper, “Surge Capacity: How to Address Ontario’s Medical Backlog”, is co-authored by former British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell and Ontario 360 co-project director Sean Speer. It documents the magnitude and costs of the backlogs and focuses on the challenge of eliminating them in a timely, patient-centred, and cost-effective way.
Campbell and Speer analyse the experiences of other provinces – including Alberta, British Columbia, Quebec, and Saskatchewan – and particularly the involvement of targeted forms of private health-care delivery to augment the public system’s capacity. This “surge capacity” is something that the Ontario government ought to pursue, they argue, as part of an overall plan to eliminate the pandemic-induced backlogs. The paper outlines lessons for how the government could incorporate greater private health-care capacity without compromising the principles of universality.
Visit the Ontario 360 website and read the full report here.
