Media Advisory: Are private surgery clinics safe? Are they cheaper than public hospitals? Not in the UK, says former health minister at Ottawa media conference Wednesday

OTTAWA, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - Sept. 14, 2015) - Private surgery and procedure clinics are a "colossal and expensive failure" in the United Kingdom (UK) and Ontario should learn from the UK's "dismal experience and not expand their use," says Frank Dobson, a former UK health minister.

Dobson is in Ontario for a series of media conferences including one in Ottawa on Wednesday, September 16 at 10 a.m. at the Royal Canadian Legion, Montgomery Branch 351, 330 Kent Street.

The Ontario government plans to expand the use of private specialty clinics to deliver procedures and surgeries now provided by local community hospitals. This model of care, says Dobson, is not working well in England where there is concern about care quality and where private clinics have walked away from surgery contracts, leaving thousands of patients in the lurch. Data shows, that each year in the UK nearly 6,000 patients are transferred to public hospitals following operations at private clinics that have gone wrong.

At Wednesday's Ottawa media conference, Dobson will elaborate on the UK's experience with private clinics that includes contract flipping and the outright collapse of one private facility in the riding Dobson represented (until the spring of 2015) as a sitting MP for 35 years.

This is Dobson's second visit to Ontario. When he was here in the spring of 2007 he cautioned the provincial government that embracing more private surgery and procedure clinics, is not good medicine for patients. Just a few months later (September 2007) the tragic death of a patient who bled to death undergoing liposuction surgery at a private clinic, brought the issues of patient safety and regulatory oversight of private clinic surgeries to the forefront. Dobson also revealed that UK private clinics cost more and were being paid 11 per cent more than public hospitals for the same type of surgeries.

Sponsored by the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU) the hospital division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), media conferences will also be held in Kingston, Minden/Haliburton, Toronto and London.

Ontario's Auditor General reported in 2012 that more than 97 per cent of the private clinics operating in Ontario are private for-profit corporations. These clinics are independent facilities, subject to lower regulatory oversight and inspection and infection control standards than public hospitals, says OCHU regional vice-president Kevin Cook, who will join Dobson for the Ottawa media conference on September 16.