Ontario Health (agency)

Ontario Health (OH; Santé Ontario) is a Crown agency of the Government of Ontario. Described as a "super agency", Ontario Health oversees much of the administration of the Ontario healthcare system, with the stated goal of integrating services split between organizations.

Background
Introduced by the Progressive Conservative (PC) government of Premier Doug Ford, as the Health Program Initiatives, the agency's mandate is defined in the Connecting Care Act, 2019, and through memorandums of understanding, mandate and strategic priorities letters and other documents from the ministry of health.

The agency is to absorb and administer or has absorbed and administers several components of the Ontario healthcare system, including:


 * Cancer Care Ontario
 * eHealth Ontario
 * Trillium Gift of Life Network
 * Health Quality Ontario
 * HealthForceOntario
 * Ontario Telemedicine Network (OTN)
 * Health Shared Services Ontario
 * the 14 Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs)/ Home and Community Care Support Services

Services such as human resources and communications will be centralized in the new agency.

Financial impact
The province expects to save $350 million a year by 2021–22, but University of Ottawa professor Doug Angus cautioned that a similar approach was introduced in Alberta, which has the highest per capita healthcare spending in the country. The New Democratic Party also raised concerns, with Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) France Gelinas noting that "In British Columbia and in Alberta, health centralization wasted billions of dollars".

Healthcare spending was heavily debated during the Ontario 2018 election, with Ford's Conservatives committing to end "hallway health care". However, the introduction of the Ontario Health Agency has also been criticized in the National Post by Randall Denley—a former provincial Conservative politician who ran in 2011 and 2014—as wasting "time, money and energy on reshaping the health bureaucracy" rather than "specific solutions to well-identified problems."

Ontario Health Teams
The agency will introduce 50 to 70 Ontario Health Teams (OHTs), which would connect groups of healthcare services in "clusters" so that a patient could access services and replace much of the role that the existing 14 local health integration networks play.

Role
OHTs are voluntary collaborations between health service providers. In their applications for designation as OHT’s, the potential teams must describe how they will integrate services for a regional population and how they will ensure “warm handovers” for patients making transitions in the system.

Criticism
The introduction of OHTs has been criticized for lack of direction from the Ministry of Health, making it unclear the role they will play in delivering or standardizing services. Critics say the government has been overly vague in defining a role for OHTs and question the effectiveness of overseeing over 50 different OHTs, saying it will be overly complex compared to the previous system of 14 LHINs, as well as eliminating their regional focus. Bob Bell, a former physician and University Health Network CEO who served as deputy health minister, who claims that "Given the lack of clear direction coming from the ministry, OHTs seem at risk of creating a fragmented, chaotic approach to provincial health service planning", specifically questioning the effect they will have on home-care services, which were previously standardized under the LHIN system, stating: "work done in developing a standard provincial foundation for homecare will be lost".

Transparency concerns
The government was criticized for the lack of consultation when introducing the Ontario Health Agency.

Concerns were raised regarding the agency's board meetings, which were initially held with no advance notice or invitation to the public. While open meetings were a legislative requirement for local health integration networks, no such legislation compels Ontario Health to hold open meetings.