Slowed health spending projected in Manitoba

Posted: 11:31 AM CDT Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023

Manitoba is on track to spend $12.3 billion on health care by the end of this year, new projections released Thursday show.

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Manitoba is on track to spend $12.3 billion on health care by the end of this year, new projections released Thursday show.

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This article was published 02/11/2023 (722 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba is on track to spend $12.3 billion on health care by the end of this year, new projections released Thursday show.

The projections show slowed health spending across Canada.

The Canadian Institute for Health Information’s annual health-care spending report shows Manitoba is in line with national trends and is spending slightly less on its health system than the per capita Canadian average.

Health-care workers at the Health Sciences Centre. (Mikaela MacKenzie / Pool / The Canadian Press files)

Canada is expected to spend $344 billion on health care this year.

Chris Kuchciak, manager of health expenditures at the CIHI, said Canada’s average health-care spend is predicted to be $8,740 per person in 2023, which is slightly less in Manitoba at about $8,616 per person.

The top health-care costs are hospitals, physicians’ services and drugs in all jurisdictions across the country. While those three big-ticket expenditures remain, spending slowed significantly. Canada’s health spending growth was about 1.5 per cent in 2023, compared with increases of 13.2 per cent in 2020 and 7.8 per cent in 2021.

“We’re seeing more modest growth. In Manitoba (there is) four per cent growth projected for 2023, and this comes after we saw a surge in spending during the COVID pandemic for the emergency response,” Kuchciak said.

“We saw health spending peaking over nine per cent (year over year) in Manitoba during the pandemic, so the current trends are moving back to more of what we saw pre-COVID.”

The institute will be monitoring a predicted rise in provincial health spending in the years ahead after the upcoming increase in federal health transfers. Health-system demands created by Canada’s aging population and overall population growth typically contribute one per cent each to the annual growth rate of spending, Kuchciak said.

Hospitals are still working to clear pandemic-related backlogs.

“The conditions are such, both from the demand and the cost side, for potentially higher spending growth going forward,” Kuchciak said.

katie.may@winnipegfreepress.com