The Independence of Ontario's Public Health Units: Does Governing Structure Matter?

Do autonomous health units fulfil their mandate better than ones that are integrated into municipal structures? Many observers of Ontario's public health system seem to think so, but this assumption is based on very little evidence. This paper seeks to help fill this gap by grounding a comparison of the spending growth of two health units with different governing structures in the multilevel governance literature. The study finds that, after an increase in provincial funding, an autonomous health unit, the Middlesex-London Health Unit, behaved more in accordance with provincial expectations than Hamilton Public Health Services, which is integrated into the City of Hamilton. The paper contributes by providing theoretical and empirical explanations for variation among local health units.