Backgrounder: Transforming Health Care

Ontario’s action plan for health care is centred on putting patients first. For patients and their families, this means faster access to an integrated health care system that helps them stay as close to home as possible.

Transforming health care will make sure patients get the right care when and where they need it, and achieve efficiencies so that everyone can continue to rely on high-quality health care in the future.

Ontario’s Actions

Investing in Ontario’s hospitals:

• Providing $12 billion over 10 years for health care infrastructure projects. Over the next five years, 18 hospitals across Ontario will complete major renovations or rebuilds. Planning is underway for 19 more major hospital projects.
• Committing to providing $175 million to 135 hospitals across Ontario to support critical infrastructure projects that will help ensure needed renovations and repairs can occur.

To provide Ontarians with better access to health care, the government is:

• Expanding its investment in family health care providers by an additional $85 million over three years to recruit and retain nurses, nurse practitioners, social workers, dietitians and other interprofessional health care providers in primary care teams and clinics across the province, including in northern, rural and fast-growing communities, to reduce wait times.
• Introducing the new dementia strategy that will build on current investments of $85 million to enhance services for older Ontarians and their families. The Province is also consulting this fall to help improve access to quality care for almost 230,000 people newly diagnosed or living with dementia and to support their caregivers.
• Expanding its immunization program to include human papillomavirus (HPV) coverage for more youth and offer free shingles vaccines for seniors 65 to 70.

To provide more coordinated care at home and in communities, Ontario is:

• Increasing the minimum base wage for eligible personal support workers to $16.50 per hour as of April 2016.
• Providing an annual increase of two per cent for the next three years for long-term care home funding.

Going Forward

To continue transforming health care across the province, the Ontario government will:

• Continue to improve access to primary care, with more same- or next-day, after-hours and weekend care and deliver coordinated services in communities across the province.
• Improve access to highly specialized stem-cell transplantation programs in Ontario. In addition to investments at the University Health Network, Hamilton Health Sciences and The Ottawa Hospital, the government plans to build more specialized rooms at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto to treat people with lymphoma, leukemia, myeloma and other blood disorders.
• Introduce legislative amendments in fall 2016 to reinforce its zero tolerance policy on the sexual abuse of patients by any regulated health care professional.