The 905 health gap: Regions pay $544M more than they get: hospitals
National Post
Wednesday, May 4, 2005
Page: A1 / FRONT
Section: News
Byline: Heather Sokoloff
Dateline: TORONTO
Source: National Post

TORONTO - Residents of Ontario's fastest-growing regions pay more in taxes than they receive in health care services, says a coalition of 10 hospitals in Peel, York, Halton and Durham regions.

Borrowing from Premier Dalton McGuinty's campaign highlighting the gap between what Ontario sends to Ottawa in taxes and gets back in services, the lobby group says every man, woman and child living in the 905 regions receives $212 less in provincial hospital funding than the rest of the province.

''As our population skyrockets, this funding gap continues to increase,'' says Kirk Corkery, chair of the GTA/905 Healthcare Alliance.

The lobby group is making its case in advance of the province's upcoming budget, which is to be released on May 11. The hospitals want 30% of all new health dollars.

The four 905 regions are home to a quarter of Ontario's population.

They are growing by 90,000 residents each year, the equivalent of a city the size of Waterloo, representing half of Ontario's annual population growth.

Those living in the regions, the economic powerhouse of Ontario, pay $573-million a year in new taxes through the Ontario Health Premium, the unpopular health tax announced in last year's budget.

But 905-ers are being short changed by $544-million a year, on a per capita basis, in hospital spending and $948-million for general health care services, concludes a report from the coalition released yesterday.

''[Government] announcements since the introduction of this tax do not indicate a proportional reinvestment of this revenue in the GTA/905 health care system,'' the hospitals' report states.

Mr. Corkery says residents of York and Peel, where hospitals are the most stretched, must often travel to downtown Toronto for chronic treatments such as chemotherapy and kidney dialysis, adding stress on the city's already stretched hospitals.

''Senior citizens are forced to take taxis to travel an additional hour to a hospital,'' he said. ''Mothers and kids are having to take the GO Train to downtown Toronto to access care.''

A government-commissioned report released last month confirmed waits for many procedures are longest in Toronto and its densely populated surrounding areas compared with elsewhere in the province.

On average, Toronto cancer patients wait at least 41 days for mastectomy surgery, for example, 905 residents wait 34 days, while waits are shorter than 20 days in cities such as Windsor, Sarnia and Chatham. The provincial average is 29 days.

For angioplasty, a serious cardiac procedure, 905 residents face average waits a full day longer than the provincial average of three days, according to the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences.

But 905 residents have shorter waits for hip and knee replacements as well as prostate surgery for cancer. Average emergency room waits are the same as the provincial average of 3.9 hours.

A spokesman for George Smitherman, the provincial Health Minister, said the government is working with the Ontario Hospital Association to come up with a new funding model for hospitals that gives greater weight to population growth.

''This government is well-aware of the pressures these hospitals feel on the question of funding and its relationship to growth,'' said David Spencer. ''We are making progress on this with our primary stakeholder, which is the OHA.''

The GTA/905 Healthcare Alliance is affiliated with the Ontario Hospital Association.

Mr. Spencer also noted the government is building two regional cancer centres at Credit Valley Hospital and Lakeridge Healthcare Corporation and a new hospital at William Osler Healthcare Centre.

More funding has been allocated for services such as cardiac surgeries at the Trillium Healthcare Centre and at the Cardiac Care Centre at Southlake. And almost $50-million went to York Central Hospital.

Authors of the report recognized Toronto's teaching hospitals and health care facilities in Northern Ontario merit additional funding because of their unique situations and did not include them in calculating provincial averages.

Illustration:
• Black & White Photo: Peter Redman, National Post / Kirk Corkery, chairman of the GTA/905 Healthcare Alliance, left, and Tariq Asmi, executive director of the group, hold a news conference.