Changes to funding formula squeeze community hospitals Ontario’s government has changed the hospital funding formula. The government has been steadily shifting money for procedures like cataract and hip & knee surgeries to force these services to be centralized into fewer towns.
The government is purposely underfunding community hospitals to force them to reduce the scope of services that they provide. Each hospital has to specialize in fewer and fewer services. Birthing units, mammography, complex continuing care beds, acute care beds, operating rooms, and all kinds of other services are closing down from a combination of real-dollar cuts to global funding and shifting monies that are tied to procedures. Patients have to drive from town to town to access care. The result? Across Ontario community hospitals have been gutted.
In addition, the new funding formula is taking money out of communities to shift it to high-growth areas, even if the hospital budgets in the communities’ losing funding are already too low to meet their needs. Currently, the new funding formula means:
· Approximately 1/3 of hospital funding goes to global (overall) hospital budgets.
· The other 2/3 is made up of HBAM funding (Health Based Allocation Method –which takes money from some communities to move it to high growth areas) and pay-for-procedure funding (which is specified for cataract, hip & knee surgeries and other volume-based procedures and unused portions must be returned if volumes are not met).
Note: even for high-growth areas, HBAM funding does not meet population growth and inflation needs. There is other hospital funding that is specifically directed to cover post-construction operating costs and special funding envelopes directed specifically for specialized care such as organ transplants or children’s hospitals, but that funding only goes to those select procedures in those select hospitals.
http://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/wp-content/uploads/final-myth-buster.pdf