Defend Public Healthcare

Ontario has far fewer hospital beds than other provinces.  Compared to other countries, we are even further behind.  For the club of the 33 richest nations (the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development), the average is 4.8 hospital beds per 1000 population in 2012 (or the reported year closest to that).  The OECD reports    just 2.74 beds per 1000 population for Canada for 2011. (The OECD data can be downloaded here) .    Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) data suggests a very similar average for Canada -- 2.79 beds per 1000 population in 2012. Ontario beds however only come out at 2.34 hospital beds per 1000 population.  For the rest of Canada, it is 3.24 beds, closer to the norm. ( The CIHI data can be downloaded here) In other words,  the rest of Canada has 38% more hospital beds per 1,000 persons than Ontario.   The average of the 33 OECD nations is more than two times higher than Ontario.  In 1990, according to OECD data, the OECD countries ha

Provincial government hospital expenditure per person in Ontario compared to the rest of Canada based on CIHI data. A large gap has grown between what the Ontario provincial government spends on hospitals and what other Canadian provinces spend.  Since 2004/5 the gap has grown from a mere $9.43 per person to $316.50 per person in 2012/13.  Nine years ago, the difference was 1%. Now, t he other provinces and territories  (as a whole)  spend  23% more per person on hospitals than Ontario does.    That is an astonishing difference.  Or at least the size of the difference is astonishing.   But that gap completely fits with the low level of nursing hours per inpatient in Ontario compared to the rest of Canada, the higher number of nursing sensitive "adverse events ", the low level of hospital beds in Ontario , the low level of hospital admissions in  Ontario , and the high level of hospital bed occupancy in Ontario. Ontario has fallen so far behind almost entirely d