It’s time for Ontario hospitals to be less administrative heavy.

Focus should instead be on hiring more doctors, nurses and personal support workers.

That’s according to health policy and communications expert Francesca Grosso, who was involved in designing the Ontario PC Party health care platform.

In the past 14 years, Grosso says, Ontario has doubled its health care budget for a population that has grown by 20 per cent over the same period.

"We are not below the amount spent in other jurisdictions around the world," Grosso says. "In fact, we’re a little on the high-end. The problem is where we’re putting our dollars."

Grosso says Ontario has 40 per cent more health care agencies, 113 per cent more administrators and has seen an increase of 300 per cent in senior bureaucracy in the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care.

Ontario Premier-designate Doug Ford, Grosso says, has made a commitment to reviewing the Health Ministry with an eye to see where the money is being spent and how much relative value it actually has for service to patients.

She states, as well, that Ford has made it clear he intends to not have top-down solutions, but wants to encourage, where possible, more community involvement.

"He has talked about the need to create efficiency so that we can redeploy dollars to care," Grosso says. "He has talked about the idea of taking pressure off hospitals."

Grosso says Ford has promised to create 30,000 long-term care beds.

"We haven’t built a single bed in Ontario for years and years and years," Grosso says.

Grosso also suggests there’s a need to re-examine the role of hospitals.

"Hospitals were never built to handle everybody," Grosso says. "They were built as acute care facilities to handle acute episodes of care. Today, our hospitals have become places where people with nowhere else to get care, come."

Sixteen per cent of patients being cared for in hospitals should be cared for elsewhere, Grosso adds, "but they have nowhere to go."

The fix for hospitals, she believes, is not throwing more money at hospitals.

"We have failed in Ontario to build out a proper community care centre," Grosso says. "That includes mental health. We have very few services available. If your child has suicidal thoughts or has gone down that rabbit hole, and is very depressed, it usually lands up that, that child lands up in an emergency room having tried to take his or her life.

"We have to be able to deliver better support in the community.

There’s a reality in Northern Ontario that does not exist in Toronto. We have to be listening to our front lines. We have to be listening to our patients. First and foremost, we have to be listening to people who actually work in the system to tell us what could change in that community to help deliver care better. That’s not what the former government has done."