Health Minister David Caplan announced Monday that Ontario will invest $75 million over the next three years to increase its capacity to perform bariatric surgery. 

The increased funding would mean a 500% increase in the number of procedures performed within the province taking the number from 244 last year to an estimated 1,470 a year by 2011/2012. "It is part of Ontario's diabetes strategy that we are increasing bariatric surgery by some 500 per cent over the course of the next three years," Caplan said.

Four centres of excellence for bariatric treatment are being created in the province at St. Joseph's HealthCare Hamilton, Humber River Regional Hospital in Toronto, Guelph General Hospital and the Ottawa Hospital.

Bariatric surgery, also known as gastric bypass surgery is a procedure that is considered to be last medical resort for people who are severely overweight and have not managed to lose weight and keep it off through any other means. 

It involves reconfiguring a patient's digestive system to limit the amount of food they can eat and digest. This procedure helps prevent or resolve problems such as type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure which are a result of being overweight. 

"High levels of obesity are leading to dramatic rises in serious chronic illnesses like diabetes, heart disease, hypertension and some cancers," said Caplan. "Bariatric surgery will help offset the costs of treating these obesity-related conditions, while reducing ER visits and hospitalizations."

As part of its Out of Country program, Ontario will spend about $51 million this year to send about 1,660 patients south of the border for the "much-needed" operation, "one of our fastest-growing expenditure lines in the health budget," he noted. 

"And this put it in very stark terms for me, that for every surgery that we perform in Ontario as opposed to in the United States, it costs us $10,000 (per patient) less than we're currently funding."

Dr. Arya Sharma, president of the Canadian Association of Bariatric Physicians and Surgeons said, "It's definitely a step in the right direction. Because obesity, if left untreated, is pretty much the root cause of a lot of the other chronic illnesses that you see."

He added that as there are only about a dozen fully trained bariatric surgeons in Canada due to the lack of capacity the average wait time country-wide for the weight-loss operation is more than five years.

Building teams of trained bariatric surgeons and related health providers at the four centres would take time Caplan said and added that "We are putting a focus on it to attract, to recruit, to retain and to train future practitioners."

He said the hospitals would have a multi-disciplinary health-care team consisting of physicians, nurses, dietitians, social workers, kinesiologists and mental health workers to provide pre-and post-bariatric surgical care, counseling, referral, and weight-loss treatment.