Wait times increased for some surgeries outsourced to for-profit clinics in Ontario: report - National Post

Median wait times for MRI scans increased from 35 days in 2017 to 47 days in 2025, a new study has found. Photo by Vladislav Stepanov /Getty ImagesArticle contentWait times for surgeries and medical imaging in Ontario have increased since the provincial government began outsourcing these procedures to private for-profit clinics, according to a new report.

The research, published on Monday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), analyzed publicly available Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) data and Freedom of Information requests and found that between 2017 and 2025, median wait times for eight of 12 priority procedures increased in Ontario.

For MRI scans, for example, the research found that median wait times increased from 35 days in 2017 to 47 days in 2025, an increase of 34 per cent. In the same time period, increased median wait times for cancer surgeries included bladder (eight per cent), breast (33 per cent), colorectal (five per cent), lung (25 per cent), and prostate (18 per cent).

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National Post spoke to Andrew Longhurst, senior researcher with CCPA and the author of the new study, who said the findings regarding cancer surgeries in particular are “concerning.”

“The movement of resources and funding to the private sector for lower complexity procedures often results in increased wait times for those more complex procedures like cancer surgeries, where they’re only performed in public hospitals,” he said. “Staff in (for-profit) facilities are performing lower complexity procedures at the expense of those more complex procedures. So that is a concerning finding regarding wait times.”

Elsewhere, other procedures saw smaller increases in wait times or little change. Median wait times for cataract surgeries, one of the key procedures subject to privatization, according to the study, increased from 67 days in 2017 to 68 days in 2025. Wait times for hip fracture repair also increased by one day, from 23 days in 2017 to 24 days in 2025.

For CT scans, median waits remained unchanged, at six days between 2017 and 2025. Coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery wait times also stayed the same, at eight days.