I’m a doctor. Here are five overlooked ways the Ontario government is making our ERs more crowded, not less
Posted on March 18, 2026 in Health Delivery System
Source: TheStar.com — Authors: Iris Gorfinkel
TheStar.com – Opinion/Contributors
March 18, 2026. By Iris Gorfinkel, Contributor
Iris Gorfinkel is a family physician and clinical researcher in Toronto.
Imagine spending the night on a stretcher in a fluorescent-lit ER hallway. When Doug Ford was elected premier in 2018, he promised to “end hallway medicine.” But by 2024, the problem had doubled to some 2,000 Ontarians lying on stretchers in hospital hallways.
That is not just a statistic, it’s a symptom of a deeper problem.
Public health lives or dies on how governments spend taxpayer dollars. Policy determines whether people have affordable housing, supervised consumption sites, enough health-care workers and access to appropriate care. But under Ford’s leadership, Ontario has enacted five laws that have further entrenched hallway medicine.
Failing to provide affordable housing
Good health is impossible without stable housing. Bill 6 effectively criminalizes encampments and the people living in them, with fines up to $10,000 and jail sentences as long as six months for those who refuse to leave. The consequences of overcrowded shelters, precarious rentals and chronic homelessness are more ER visits, infections, overdoses and early deaths. A night spent in hospital costs around $2,000. A night spent in subsidized housing costs well under $160. This adds pressure to already-crowded ERs and worsens the hallway medicine burden.
Shutting down all supervised consumption sites
These sites have saved the lives of hundreds of Ontarians. Yet on March 13, 2026, the province announced that funding would end for remaining supervised consumption sites. Bill 223 forced municipalities to get provincial approval for new sites, effectively blocking new ones from opening. This deprives people with addictions the on-the-spot testing needed to ensure the drugs they use aren’t laced with deadly toxins like fentanyl and methamphetamine — additives users have no way of detecting. A Toronto study in The Lancet found that supervised consumption sites helped prevent hundreds of overdose deaths in 18 months. Their closure means more overdoses, more patients on stretchers in ER hallways and more deaths.
Underfunded Nursing
Wages remained suppressed for years while workloads exploded, driving nurses into private agencies and clinics. The reason was Bill 124 . This capped wage increases for nurses and other public‑sector health workers at one per cent a year, even as inflation and workload soared. This law was struck down as unconstitutional, but the damage done will take years to repair. Every nurse recruited to a private clinic leaves one less for the public system. The nursing shortage prevents patients from getting transferred to a hospital bed and strands them in ER corridors while they wait.
Expanding for‑profit medicine
Bill 60 funnels tax dollars to private surgical and diagnostic clinics while starving the public system of much-needed health-care workers. Rather than pay public nurses fair wages, this incentivized the rapid expansion of private surgical and diagnostic centres. Cataract surgeries, MRIs, CT scans, and endoscopy are done in for‑profit settings but remain publicly financed. Watchdog investigations describe clinics that upsell costly add-ons without clearly disclosing that the surgery is publicly covered. Worse, the law prevents the public from learning how taxpayer dollars are spent — contracts made with for-profit facilities are kept from public view. Privatization is rewarded as waits in the public system grow even longer.
Neglecting home care and keeping people in hospital beds
Thousands of alternate level care patients have been left without needed rehab, mental health care or complex home care. Bill 7 gave hospitals the right to off-load seniors into long-term-care homes they did not choose. That increases the chances of being readmitted to hospital. Prematurely placing patients into long-term care delays rehab and punishes them for poor policy choices. They are then more likely to return to ERs which further increases hallway medicine.
“End hallway medicine” was a great slogan in its time. But slogans aren’t what’s lacking. Ontarians are suffering from a shortage of wise policies that address root causes. Spending the night on an ER stretcher is sheer misery — and until basics like housing and nursing shortages are prioritized, hallway medicine will remain a harsh reality.
Iris Gorfinkel is a family physician and clinical researcher in Toronto.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/im-a-doctor-here-are-five-overlooked-ways-the-ontario-government-is-making-our-ers-more-crowded-not-less/article_bb216a1f-8f25-444b-98a7-5dd6cadf0573.html?source=newsletter&utm_content=a05&utm_source=ts_nl&utm_medium=email&utm_email=0C810E7AE4E7C3CEB3816076F6F9881B&utm_campaign=top_32535
Tags: economy, featured, Health, Home Care, housing, privatization
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