ABSTRACT
The fiscal sustainability of Canada’s health system is under pressure. Across Canada, Provincial governments spend nearly half of their available revenue on healthcare, and the healthcare share of public budgets has continued to rise over time. Studying the Provincial variation in public spending on the components of the healthcare system could provide insights about the outcomes produced by inter-provincial policy differences.
This annual report compares provincial trends in public sector spending on hospitals relative to total public sector healthcare spending, population, GDP and the number of staffed hospital beds. The report ranks the provinces from lowest to highest in each spending metric.
Data on public sector hospital expenditure, total public sector health expenditure, provincial GDP and population have been obtained from the Canadian Institute for Health Information’s (CIHI) National Health Expenditure Database. Data on staffed public hospital beds has been obtained from CIHI’s Canadian MIS Database.
There is significant variation across provinces according to the spending metrics used. As a per cent of total public health expenditure, hospital spending declined in almost every province, while expenditure as a per cent of GDP remained relatively stable.
Public hospital spending in all provinces on a per capita and per bed basis rose throughout these years. Between the provinces, there was substantial variation. The reasons for this are not immediately clear, but the interprovincial variation in these spending metrics merits the attention of future research.
