Thank you to the member opposite for the question.

This government is actually making changes through Bill 60 which, if passed, will be expanding oversight and patient protection when it comes to people’s health. For some reason, the members opposite don’t seem to want to expand those patient protections. They don’t seem to want to support Bill 60, but I hope they will, because Bill 60 has a whole bunch of protections in it to address situations such as this.

For example, any community health centre, in the future, will have to post any uninsured charges both online and in person so people know ahead of time. They’ll have to have a process for receiving and responding to patient complaints. And patients cannot be denied access to treatment if they don’t purchase uninsured services. Finally, we’re also expanding oversight to the Patient Ombudsman to include these new centres.

All of these things are in place to help patient protections. I would think the members opposite would support that.

The whole point of this legislation is to change the model that was a model of independent health facilities into a model of integrated community health centres, bringing the new health centres and the old ones, 900 of which have been operating across the province for 30 years under all kinds of governments—NDP, Liberal and Conservative—to change that model to make them integrated under the auspices of Ontario Health and with direction which is centrally controlled—centralized wait-list management. This is a significant improvement. It will improve access to patient care, and this government is all about doing that—making sure patients get the care they need quickly, and making sure they get their lives back as soon as possible.

In fact, that is what this government is doing—putting people like Lois first, putting patients in Ontario first. We know the status quo is not working, and that is why we are innovating.

There’s nothing in Bill 60 which talks about any particular model of care. For example, we had the Kensington Eye Institute come in. Kensington Eye Institute would be a model that could be—under this Bill 60, they could be the kind of place that gets established. Kensington Eye Clinic has been giving great care to patients for many years and will continue to do so. So we can continue to build out models, make sure that they are serving patients, and make sure patients are getting the care they need, in a timely way, from the best possible experts who can provide that care. That is what Bill 60 is about—patient access, quickly.

Thank you to the member opposite for the question.

No, this is an unacceptable situation. This should not have happened, and I feel very badly for that person who waited 11 days for someone to come and see them.

Our government has made significant investments into home care. A strong home and community care sector is critical to our government’s plan to end hallway health care and build a patient-centred, connected system. That’s why a few years ago—last year, we invested an additional billion dollars to improve the quality of care and keep the people of Ontario in their homes longer with the care that they need.

We like the model at the Southlake hospital, Southlake@home, which has the home care provider meeting with the person who is going to receive the care in the hospital, so they can meet the doctor, the nurse and get the discharge papers, so that person will know that the person will be there and when. We want to make sure that that’s the kind of system we have across Ontario, so people get home care which is appropriate and can stay out of hospital and get well.

As this government has said many times, the only thing better than care close to home is care at home. In partnership with hospitals, primary care and our Ontario Health teams, Ontario is expanding and improving access to home and community care.

Through the 2022 budget, the government announced a plan to invest a billion dollars over three years to get more people connected to care in the comfort of their own home, but our government is now, through this budget, accelerating investments to bring funding in 2023-24 up to $569 million, including nearly $300 million to support contract rate increases to stabilize the home and community care workforce. This funding will also expand home care services and improve the quality of care, making it easier and faster for people to connect to care.

Having strong home and community care for people like Barbara is a key part of this government’s plan for connected and convenient care.