Toronto's Population Boom Turning Into a Hospital Shortage

In Toronto, hospitals are serving more people, which is stretching their resources thin. "As downtown Toronto’s population has skyrocketed in the past decade, tens of thousands of patients have streamed out of their new condos and into the hospitals on their collective doorstep," according to a story by Kelly Grant in the Globe and Mail.

This demand is not just coming from a condo boom but also an influx of people coming to the city center to work. Grant reports, "Annual emergency department visits increased by 43 percent at the Hospital for Sick Children, 45 percent at Mount Sinai Hospital and 59 percent at Toronto General Hospital, which is also part of the University Health Network." Hospital officials expressed concern about how this increase in patients could affect all the healthcare services the facilities provide, from surgeries to emergency medicine.