Changes in hospital & physician density in Canada: 1980-2007

Shaded bar shows the period from 1992 to 1997 (the five-year period immediately following the recession). For the series showing hospital beds per 1,000 population, data for 1993 and 1995 are connected with a straight line due to missing data for 1994.

This chart, prepared in partnership with the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation (CHSRF), shows the impact of Canada’s recession in the 1990s, which led to several years of reduced public spending on health.

These reductions led to a decline in the number of physicians per 1,000 population between 1992 and 1997, and hospital beds per 1,000 population saw an accelerated fall over the same period, against a backdrop of a long-term decline in bed numbers and in common with many other health systems. Click on the name of a series underneath the x axis, to alter the display to show just one series at a time. 

This chart forms part of a Nuffield Trust and CHSRF research study looking at the Canadian experience of managing health reform in a time of austerity and the lessons for the NHS in England.

The report: Managing health reform through an economic downturn (October 2011), by Nuffield Trust Senior Fellow Ruth Thorlby, is based on presentations and discussions from a partnership seminar held jointly by the two organisations in May 2011, and explores how politicians and policy-makers from two Canadian provinces handled the impact of hospital closures and other austerity measures on the health system.

The work forms part of the wider Nuffield Trust research project: Managing the NHS through the financial squeeze: learning from international experience.