Ottawa will have one of Ontario’s first standalone surgery clinics
A group of
, which has completed more than 2,000 hip, knee and shoulder surgeries at Ottawa’s Riverside hospital, will operate one of the first standalone surgical centres in Ontario.
Health Minister Sylvia Jones
this week that four new licenses for surgical and diagnostic centres to deliver orthopedic surgeries will be issued in early 2026 as part of a two-year, $125 million investment. Surgeries will begin in 2026, according to the Ministry of Health.
Among the new licensees is the
Academic Orthopedic Surgical Associates of Ottawa
(AOAO), which has operated privately out of The Ottawa Hospital’s Riverside campus since 2023. The group performed surgeries on weekends, a period the hospital’s operating rooms had previously been closed.
The unusual arrangement was a pilot project with The Ottawa Hospital. Shortly after it began in 2023, President and CEO Cameron Love said TOH was evaluating the project and planned to work with AOAO and the province to build a private, standalone surgical centre that would function as The Ottawa Hospital’s high-efficiency orthopedic centre for patients requiring day surgery, leaving more complex cases for hospital operating rooms.
This week, the hospital released a statement saying it remains in close contact with AOAO as their application advances “and we continue to work together to enhance integrated care for our community.”
Hospital spokesperson Rebecca Abelson said details about the working arrangement between the hospital and AOAO are still being worked out. It remains unclear whether day surgeries will continue on weekends at the Riverside campus after a new surgical centre has opened.
Since AOAO began operating on weekends in 2023, “the Ottawa Hospital has made significant progress in improving access to orthopedic surgical care,” the hospital said.
As of the end of November, 2,225 hip, knee and shoulder procedures have been completed through the partnership.
A published report from a 2024 Ontario Orthopedic Association meeting looked at AOAO, along with other “innovative workflow models to achieve remarkable efficiency” in orthopedic surgery. It offered a glimpse into what the future of day orthopedic surgery might be in Ottawa.
In the report, Dr. Paul Beaulé, former chief of orthopedic surgery at The Ottawa Hospital and part of AOAO, talked about the efficiency of the ambulatory orthopedic centre pilot project at the Riverside campus. He said surgical cases were staggered across multiple operating rooms so that one surgeon could supervise two to three simultaneous rooms, “enabling extraordinarily high throughput,” according to the report. It noted that a single surgeon completed up to ten joint replacements in a day.
The report said Beaulé’s concept of integrated ambulatory centres “envisages free-standing facilities working in tandem with hospital sites. An ambulatory orthopedic centre can handle all eligible day surgeries, thereby freeing hospital ORs and inpatient beds for more complex cases.”
The announcement represents the first time the Ontario government has licensed free-standing, privately operated surgical centres for orthopedic surgeries. Until now, standalone medical centres have been largely limited to diagnostics and cataract surgeries, with some exceptions.
It represents a significant step toward the privatization of a core part of the health-care system in Ontario, something that critics have said is potentially harmful.
Among concerns is that high-efficiency day surgery centres will attract surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses and other health workers away from the public system, leaving some of the more complex cases waiting longer for surgery.
Some reports from Alberta have found that the shift to privately operated surgeries there has cost more per procedure and not significantly reduced overall wait times. Concerns have also been raised about a lack of transparency when increasing components of the health system are delivered by for-profit, private operators.
In a statement, the Ministry of Health said it will ensure new surgical centres are integrated and linked with the broader public health system.
“This includes requiring new facilities to provide detailed staffing plans that protect the stability of staffing resources at public hospitals, report into the province’s wait times information system and participate in regional central intakes, where available, to ensure people get the care they need as quickly as possible.
All community surgical and diagnostic centres are under the oversight of Accreditation Canada’s new quality-assurance program, which applies many of the same requirements of public hospitals to ensure consistent patient safety and quality care.”
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