Ontario Expanding Surgical, Diagnostic Centres to Reduce Wait Times

Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford speaks to supporters after he was re-elected as the Premier of Ontario in Toronto on Feb. 27, 2025. The Canadian Press/Chris Young

Ontario will be expanding its publicly funded surgical and diagnostic centres to reduce wait times for MRIs, CT scans, and endoscopies, Premier Doug Ford announced.

The province will spend $155 million over two years to add 57 new facilities across the province that will provide MRI and CT scans and gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopy services, the Ontario government announced in a June 27 news release. The province says the expansion will help connect 1.2 million people to publicly funded services “faster.”

“The 57 new centres we are rolling out across Ontario will make a huge difference for people in the province, helping them get the care they need, when they need it,” Ford said in the release. “It’s all part of our plan to protect and improve our health-care services, all while ensuring people always receive the care they need with their OHIP card.”

The expansion will include 35 newly licensed MRI and CT scan centres and 22 newly licensed GI endoscopy centres. Licences will be issued starting this summer following a call for applications, the province says.

The expansion of these services aims to reduce wait times and ensure patients receive procedures within the “medically recommended timeframe,” the province adds.

“When it comes to wait times for surgeries and procedures, the status quo is not acceptable,” Health Minister Sylvia Jones said in the news release. “By licensing 57 new community surgical and diagnostic centres across Ontario, we are reducing wait times and ensuring more people can receive timely care in their community, for years to come.”

Ontario will require new facilities to provide detailed staffing plans, report wait times, and participate in regional central intakes to help ensure people receive care “as quickly as possible,” the province says.

A Plan for Connected and Convenient Care

The province also says that this initiative builds on its progress since launching “A Plan for Connected and Convenient Care” in 2023, which pledged to expand health-care services, create faster access to health care, and hire more health-care workers.

Ontario had the shortest surgical wait times of any province in Canada in 2024, with more than 83 percent of people receiving their procedure within “clinically recommended target times,” the province said.

Nearly 100,000 MRI and CT operating hours were funded by the province over the past year, and 50 new MRI machines were added in 43 hospitals across Ontario.

In addition, four new cataract centres were added in the province to allow for more publicly funded cataract and other eye surgeries, including 40,000 surgeries over the past year, the province said.

The backlog of cervical cancer screening tests was eliminated at the end of August 2023, which returned testing turnaround times to the pre-pandemic standard of 10 to 14 days, according to the province.

The June 27 announcement was made at a press conference in Richmond Hill, Ont. at the Schroeder Ambulatory Centre, which will receive $14 million to provide MRIs, CT scans, and GI endoscopy procedures to more than 115,000 patients over two years. The province says the other recipients will be announced in the coming weeks.

“We are delighted to be licensed under this new framework and look forward to opening our doors later this year,” Schroeder Ambulatory Centre Foundation board member Raj Kothari said in a statement. “Our goal is simple: reduce pain, increase mobility and ease pressure on hospitals by providing high-quality, same-day care in partnership with the public system.”