A recent report by the Parkland Institute in Alberta shows that most for-profit surgical facilities have significantly higher costs for the same procedures as public hospitals, and these costs have been growing faster than the average rate of inflation. This is despite the fact that for-profit surgical providers only perform lower complexity procedures, while higher risk and more complex surgical cases remain in the public system. Between 2018-19 and 2022-23 in Alberta, public payments to for-profit surgical facilities increased by 66 per cent while public spending on public operating rooms only increased by 12 per cent.
The report also challenges the provincial government’s claim that private delivery of surgeries has improved wait times. Since surgical outsourcing took off in 2018, median wait times in Alberta have increased for nine of 11 priority procedures tracked by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI). These findings are consistent with the international evidence on the impact of privatizing surgical procedures.
Andrew Longhurst, “Operation Profit: Private Surgical Contracts Deliver Higher Costs and Longer Waits,” Parkland Institute, available online: https://www.parklandinstitute.ca/operation_profit