Despite increased funding for cataract surgeries to private, for-profit clinics, access to surgery fell 9% for lower-income people, according to new research published in CMAJ ( Canadian Medical Association Journal ) https://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.
1503/cmaj.240414 . Unexpectedly, despite new public funding for operations provided in private for-profit surgical centers, which was intended to fully cover all overhead costs and remove the need to charge patients, this disparity did not decrease, but instead grew during the funding change period," says Dr.
Robert Campbell, lead author, clinician–scientist, Department of Ophthalmology at Queen's University and senior adjunct scientist at ICES The COVID-19 pandemic created backlogs for cataract surgery and, to increase access without the need for patients to pay, the provincial government provided funding to private clinics in 2020. The study, conducted by researchers at ICES, Queen's University, and the University of Toronto, included 935 729 cataract surgeries performed in Ontario between January 2017 and March 2022. Researchers looked at differences in socioeconomic status of patients who underwent surgery at publicly funded hospitals and patients who accessed surgery at private, for-profit centers before the additional funding (up to February 2020) and after (March 2020–2022).
The majority of cataract surgeries (81%) were performed in public hospitals, with the remaining 19% performed in private, for-profit surgical cent.