Ontario warned against following England’s path on surgical privatization

Posted: November 18, 2025

(November 17, 2025) By: Village Media Staff, NewmarketToday.ca

Labour and health officials were in Barrie today to shed light on academic reports around privatization of hospital surgeries in England.

They say this led to growing inequality, longer wait times and disruption of services in the public health-care system.

Allyson Pollock, co-author of the reports and professor emerita at Newcastle University, has been investigating cataract, knee and hip surgeries in England and Scotland over a 20-year period.

She says the current system in England benefits wealthier patients who can “jump the queue” by accessing care at private, for-profit facilities, while the poorest and less healthy people suffer longer wait times for hip and knee surgery due to reduced capacity in public hospitals.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) says the reports contrast extensive privatization with Scotland, which continued to invest in public health care and was able to increase surgical rates without using the private sector.

The Ontario Health Coalition and CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospitals Unions (OCHU-CUPE) say this research offers “important lessons” for Ontario, where the provincial government has been expanding privatization of cataract, hips and knee surgeries through private clinics.

By 2024, the reports say 59 per cent of cataract surgeries were being delivered privately in England, up from 15 per cent in 2019. The report also says this expansion came at a “steep cost” to the public purse as expenditures have increased. Between 2018-19 and 2022-23, the number of cataract surgeries across England increased by 25 per cent while annual expenditure went up by 95 per cent.

“The private sector takes away precious resources from the public system,” Pollock said in a release. “In addition to the significant amount of money diverted to private owners, public hospitals lose doctors and other staff who are required to manage and monitor more complicated eye care.”

It’s estimated that 60,000 patients have been displaced from surgical wait lists to make way for patients who had their original treatment in private facilities, the reports indicate.

“The private sector cherry-picks healthier patients, discharges them early and then washes its hands of patients, so that the management of re-admissions including complications following surgery goes back to the public system,” Pollock said. “Meanwhile, the poorer and sicker patients suffer longer wait times in England.

“In Scotland, where privatization is minimal, access to care is based on need instead of affluence,” she added.

While wait times have been shorter for patients going to the private sector, for every one per cent of patient growth in publicly funded private sector treatments, the overall wait times for all patients rise by two per cent in England, the reports say.

“Ontario must learn from the perilous path of privatization followed in England and abandon its privatization of surgical care,” OCHU-CUPE says in the release.

Between 2017 and 2022, they say about 19 per cent of cataract surgeries in Ontario were delivered by private clinics. The provincial government is also providing $125 million over two years to private clinics for 20,000 hip and knee surgeries, while another $155 million is being moved to the private sector for diagnostic tests.

“Like in England, Ontario is paying a higher price for cataract surgeries in private clinics. Like England, we are seeing increasing inequities in access to care,” said Natalie Mehra, OHC’s executive director.

OHC says it has been investigating private clinics across the province for “unethical practices,” as the organization has received complaints from patients about upselling and extra-billing. It claims some private clinics in the Barrie area, when contacted by OHC, provided misleading and unethical information.

“For instance, one private clinic said that patients could get faster access to cataract surgeries by paying out-of-pocket,” states the release. “They suggested this would help avoid the ‘OHIP route,’ which would entail wait times of six months or more.”

Mehra says wait times at Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre in Barrie are about 4.5 months (139 days) for the lowest priority patients.

“We are calling on the Ford government to stop the private clinics and put that funding into the public hospitals that behave ethically and provide high-quality cataract surgery in accordance with the patient protections in our public medicare laws,” she added.

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