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The Post contacted a sample of 19 hospitals or health regions to ask about their experience with cosmetic surgery, all but three responding.

Eleven said they allow from a few to scores of cosmetic procedures every year.

North York General in Toronto, for instance, said that 168 aesthetic procedures were performed in 2016, out of 16,000 operations. The cosmetic work did not bump any medically necessary treatment, said spokeswoman Nadia Daniell-Colarossi.

“NYGH was not funded to run the ORs for the times that the (non-medicare) procedures took place, which allows us to make those ORs available,” she said.

In fact, Daniell-Colarossi said North York has among the best surgical wait-times in Ontario.

“These procedures are performed in otherwise unused blocks of operating room time,” echoed Matt Haggerty of Southlake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket, Ont.

Southlake does about 120 patient-paid cosmetic surgeries a year, just under one per cent of the total, he said.

The Calgary region’s hospitals did 110 cosmetic procedures in 2015-16, well under one per cent of all operations, said Alberta Health Services spokesman Bruce Conway.

London Health Sciences Centre in Ontario hosted 74 cosmetic operations last year, out of 27,000 procedures, while the William Osler Health Centre’s two Toronto-area hospitals recorded 150.

Brown noted that Canadian hospitals have spare, unfunded slots despite the fact they keep much more limited operating hours than their American counterparts. Many U.S. surgical facilities run for twice as long — from 7 a.m. to midnight, he said.