The Auditor General of Ontario, Shelley Spence, provided a news release on a newly tabled report that audits performance in healthcare related areas across the province. The news release highlights physician billing, medical schools and access to healthcare with the procurement of personal protective equipment also making headlines separately.
One main point from the report is Spence’s finding that the province is not properly overseeing doctors’ billings. The report on physician billing found that doctors in Ontario were billing the province for more than 24 hours a day.
According to Spence, “the Ministry of Health lacks a modernized payment system and is not using data analysis to detect potentially inappropriate physician billings.”
Spence determined that over a period of three years, a minimum of 59 doctors billed for more than 24 hours in a day, with a peak of 82 doctors overbilling from 2024-2025.
Additionally, Spence found that more than 100 doctors over the past three years claimed to have worked all 365 or 366 days of the year, with several physicians billing for more than 500 patients in a single day.
The audit included that the Ministry of Health system used to bill for OHIP services — which has been in use since 1980 — couldn’t automatically identify high-risk billing. Spence iterated that the system relies “primarily on tips and complaints to trigger post-payment audits” and stated that based on potential anomalies up to 665 million in payments would require review.
The report on health education went on to identify shortfalls in medical education with Spence finding that “the province expanded medical school seats without first ensuring there were enough training sites or a clear framework to measure outcomes.”
Spence concluded that medical schools produced 44 per cent fewer family medicine seats than planned for the 2025/26 school year, as a result of a lack of training clinics.
Spence also claimed that the province would need 2,000 family physicians to meet the needs of the approximately two million Ontarians who were found to not be attached to a primary care provider in 2024.
The report on primary care, established that the two million Ontarians without a primary care provider represent about 12 per cent of the province’s population, and that Health Care Connect — the province’s only central match making program — has failed to meet demand, as more than 108,000 Ontarians have been waiting for more than a year to get connected with a primary physician.
Spence said that provincial failure in coordinating physician recruitment has created a “fragmented and competitive approach to recruitment across the province.”
The report on Supply Ontario found that the organization that is responsible for managing the province’s personal protective equipment (PPE) stockpile “does not have a robust inventory management system that integrates its inventory and cost records, relying instead on multiple sources and manual process to track inventory, shipments and costs.”
Spence noted that this causes inefficiencies, inconsistencies and delays in “real-time inventory and cost reporting.”
The report went on to note that the province is stuck purchasing level two facial masks from contracts signed during the pandemic that are no longer amendable. Currently, “health-care sector organizations now source level three masks, which are more protective.”
This resulted in Supply Ontario purchasing 188 million level two masks in 2024/25 to fulfil its contractual obligations but only distributing about 39 million masks or 21 per cent of purchases.
Similar contractual obligations have tied Supply Ontario to purchasing 25 million N95 masks with a distribution number of only 5.5 million or 22 per cent of purchases in 2024/25.
The report estimates that “approximately 376 million surgical masks and 96 million N95 masks, worth approximately 125 million of taxpayers’ money will expire between 2025/26 and 2030/31.”
Each individual report goes further in-depth on issues found within the various areas of healthcare, with the above mentioned being those highlighted in the press release.