By Sumayya
Sending surgeries and medical scans to private companies has not cut wait times for most operations, a fresh study published Monday shows.
The study, put out by a left-leaning research group called the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), used public records and government information. It discovered that since Ontario began sending more operations to private clinics, wait times for these scans and surgeries have actually gone up.
“Because the provincial government has focused on private business delivery instead of growing public hospital space, wait times are generally climbing in Ontario,” Andrew Longhurst, a senior researcher and the study’s writer, stated.
According to Canadian health trackers, middle-point wait times for eight out of 12 main operations went up between 2017 and 2025. These procedures encompass ones sent to private clinics, like eye cataract surgeries and MRI scans.
For eye cataract operations, which the paper named as a main surgery shifted to private clinics, the middle wait time rose from 67 days in 2017 to 68 days in 2025, according to the records.
“This path goes against the government’s claim that using private clinics for eye surgeries would heavily drop wait times,” the writer noted.
For MRI scans, the paper states, wait times climbed from 35 days in 2017 to 47 days in 2025, which is a 35 per cent jump.
Wait times for CT scans stayed the same at six days, the paper noted.
“However, wait times for the hardest-hit 10 per cent of patients jumped by 95 per cent for MRIs and 231 per cent for CT scans, raising worries that many people are waiting much longer,” the report stated.
“In other words, it is not just the middle wait times that matter. The longer waits for many people is a warning sign for the health network’s performance.”
While a relatively small number of daytime surgeries are sent to these private centers, known as Integrated Community Health Services Centres (ICHSC), the number of tax-funded operations and scans rose by about 117 per cent between 2017 and 2025.
In 2024-25, around $674 million went to private surgeries and scans in Ontario, a 48 per cent rise from 2017-18, the study discovered.
There are 918 of these centers in the province, up from 902 in 2023. Most services at these spots are imaging scans like ultrasounds. The Health Ministry has hired eight clinics for plastic surgeries, six for eye surgeries, and seven for CT and MRI scans.
Don Mills Surgical Unit and Shouldice Hospital, two private facilities, perform multiple operations and hernia fixes.
The report states that across Canada, private surgeries and scans consistently cost more than the exact same operations done in public hospitals.
The paper notes that eye surgeries at the Don Mills unit cost twice as much as public hospital operations, while knee surgeries cost two to three times more.
Cutting surgical backlogs
In a statement, Lily Barnes, a speaker for Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones, called the study’s claims wrong.
“Ontario is proud to have one of the biggest publicly funded health networks in the world, with some of the shortest wait times for critical operations in the land, and our team continues to provide record funding, investing over $101 billion in health care this year alone,” she stated, adding that this is a 64 per cent rise since 2018.
“For the third year in a row, we have boosted hospital funding by a record four per cent, bringing the total rise to over 50 per cent since 2018. This massive funding has directly helped hospitals drop surgery backlogs, leading to a 4,260 per cent rise in public same-day hip surgeries and a 5,840 per cent rise in same-day knee surgeries.”
She added that the province has taken strong steps to spread public surgeries to community diagnostic clinics to connect more individuals to operations faster.
“Our growth has resulted in 32,000 more people each year getting eye surgeries, 1.2 million more individuals getting MRI or CT scans per year, and 20,000 more joint operations per year,” the statement continued.
“Our team will keep delivering faster, easier care in every corner of the province, always making sure that people get the medical care they need with their health card, never their credit card.”
The report says that health privatization is becoming more set in Ontario since the 2023 passage of Bill 60, called the Your Health Act, a law that let private clinics do more health-covered surgeries to cut the province’s backlog.
“The growth of this private industry—profiting from massive public cash—comes as public hospitals face tight budget cuts,” the report states, adding that Ontario’s financial watchdogs guess that just to keep up basic services, $6.4 billion in fresh health cash is needed in 2026-27. The 2026 budget adds $3.4 billion, leaving the system short by $3 billion this year, the report notes.
“Costs in the hospital field have been climbing by about six per cent per year due to population growth, aging, and inflation,” the paper states.
“However, the Ontario budget plans for total health funding to rise by 3.5 per cent in 2026-27 and 2.3 per cent in 2027-28. These rises are not enough to handle the medical needs of the public.”
In advice given in the report, Longhurst suggests the Ontario government give more cash to public hospitals, use a single shared waiting list, change how doctors are paid to back team work, and staff existing public operating rooms that sit empty on days, evenings, and weekends.
“Instead of pushing further into privatization, the Ontario government should focus on plans backed by clear proof and real experience, both in Canada and across the world,” he wrote.
“Even though some of these public system fixes exist in a few parts of the province and among certain surgical fields, the provincial government does not have a clear plan to spread public hospital upgrades provincewide.”
