Outlying hospitals cash-strapped, report says

Study by GTA/905 Healthcare Alliance finds care is starting to be affected

By KAREN HOWLETT

THE GLOBE AND MAIL

Wednesday, May 4, 2005 Page A18

Hospitals in the Greater Toronto Area are not getting their fair share of funding from the provincial government, compromising their ability to provide care for residents close to home, according to a report on the state of hospital care in the region, released yesterday.

The report, prepared by the GTA/905 Healthcare Alliance, says hospitals in Durham, Halton, Peel and York are being shortchanged by more than $544-million every year.

Every man, woman and child living in the GTA/905 region receives $212 less in provincial funding for hospital care compared with other regions, excluding Toronto and Northern Ontario, the report says. Including those regions would increase the size of the gap, it says.

The underfunding by successive provincial governments will only get worse as the regions continue to grow, the report says.

The population in the four municipalities is growing by 90,000 a year, ranking them among the fastest-growing regions in the province, it reports.

"These hospitals are stretched to the limit and this is cause for concern," Kirk Corkery, chairman of the alliance, told reporters at Queen's Park yesterday.

"While our hospitals have been able to cope, cracks are beginning to show."

This is the first report on the state of hospital care in the regions surrounding Toronto prepared by the alliance, the collective voice of acute-care and mental-health hospitals across the GTA/905 regions.

David Spencer, a spokesman for Health Minister George Smitherman, said the ministry is working with the Ontario Hospital Association to improve the funding formula for hospitals and take into account population growth in the GTA/905 regions.

"We certainly recognize that these hospitals are dealing with a significant amount of population growth," he said.

The report says 20 hospitals in the four regions provide care to a population of three million and operate on average at 94 per cent capacity, well above the provincial average of 77 per cent.

Residents of the GTA/905 regions have less access to hospital care in their own communities than people living in any other part of Ontario, Mr. Corkery said.

Every year, more than 35,000 residents must seek hospital care outside their communities, the report says.

At the same time, only 73 per cent of residents in need of medical attention get care in their local hospitals.

He said the problem is most acute in York, where investments in health-care services have not kept pace with the fast-growing region.

Requiring residents to seek hospital care outside their communities places added stress on patients and their families, he said.

Senior citizens are forced to take taxis to travel an extra hour or more to get to a hospital.

Mothers and their children have to take a GO Train to get to a hospital in downtown Toronto.

Hospitals in the region receive $492 in government funding for each person a year, compared with a provincial average of $704, the report says.

The discrepancy in funding has had little impact on hospital emergency rooms -- the average time patients wait in an emergency room in the GTA/905 regions is four hours, about the same as in other regions in the province.

However, patients in the GTA/905 regions are waiting longer for some other medical procedures, including hysterectomies and mastectomies.

For other essential hospital-care services, including urgent coronary angiography and urgent bypass surgery, the wait time is the same.

The report says hospitals in the four regions provide care that costs 30 per cent less on average than those in Toronto.

As a result, it says, if more residents of the regions could get care close to home it would save the province's cash-strapped health-care system an estimated $17-million a year.

The 905 crowd

Hospitals in the GTA/905 regions have an occupancy rate of almost 94 per cent, compared with 77 per cent for the province as a whole.

Hospital occupancy rates

The percentage of acute-care beds occupied, on average, on any day of the year:

Ontario: 76.9%

Ontario Teaching: 86.3%

Toronto: 82.5%

Toronto Teaching: 86.2%

GTA/905: 93.8%

Wait Times

These measure how long patients must wait for essential hospital care services in four key areas - cancer; heart and stroke; cataract; and hip and knee replacement. Wait times for residents in the GTA/905 vary: