Ontario Reducing Wait Times for Surgeries and Procedures

Community surgical and diagnostic centres connecting people to faster, more convenient care with your health card

The Ontario government is now making it quicker and easier to access surgeries and other medical procedures with its new 3-step plan to reduce hospital wait times.

Step One: Tackling the existing backlog of cataract surgeries by partnering with community surgical and diagnostic centres. This will add an additional 14,000 more surgeries per year, accounting for 25% of the current waitlist. Surgical wait lists are anticipated to return to pre-pandemic levels by March 2023, barring operational issues.

Step Two: Expanding the scope of community surgical and diagnostic centres to address non-urgent, low-risk regional needs such as cataracts, MRI&CT imaging, colonoscopies, and endoscopy procedures. To start as early as 2023, allowing hospitals to focus their efforts and resources on more complex and high-risk surgeries.

Step Three: Introducing legislation that will increase the amount of publicly funded MRI and CT scans at existing regional centres, while strengthening oversight to ensure high quality, locally accessible h.