Archive for the ‘Health Delivery System’ Category

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Hospitals plagued by staff shortages and ER closures under Ford government, auditor general finds

Wednesday, December 6th, 2023

Plagued by shortages of doctors and nurses and persistent emergency room closures, Ontario lacks a province-wide strategy to fix the problems, the watchdog agency said in a wide-ranging audit of government performance… The worsening staff shortages have been fuelled by the Ford government’s Bill 124, which limited nurses and many other public sector workers to maximum annual pay hikes of one per cent, the auditor found.

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Learn these three simple numbers to help prevent suicide

Friday, December 1st, 2023

Responders at 9-8-8 are trained in suicide prevention and are based at existing helplines across the country. They will listen with compassion and empathy and give callers and texters space to share without being judged. Responders will work with callers and texters to explore ways to cope and pathways to safety when things are overwhelming… It is important to note that while 9-8-8 will help keep people safe in the moment, it is not a replacement for mental health care provided in primary care, in communities and in hospitals.

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We are walking down the dangerous path of health care privatization

Tuesday, November 21st, 2023

… medicare restrictions on physicians are provincially and territorially imposed, so many virtual clinics skirt the rules by employing physicians licenced in a different jurisdiction than the patient lives. Resolving these loopholes is not impossible — simply fold nurse practitioners into the same medicare legislation physicians work under and bring in nationwide physician licencing. Yet there seems to be no appetite on the part of health ministries to address these issues.

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Canada needs doctors – so why is the country forcing Canadian physicians into exile?

Friday, November 17th, 2023

Both the licensing exams and residency matching are areas that if modified can establish a more streamlined, simple and fair repatriation process. Provincial governments can also work with medical schools to cover salaries for residency slots and the related program expansion costs for medical disciplines in shortest supply.

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“Not broken, just underfunded”: for-profit care won’t reduce wait times, CCPA report says

Wednesday, November 15th, 2023

“Ontario does not lack the physical space and equipment to improve wait times for surgeries and medical imaging; what is missing is the health care workforce and funding necessary to do the work.” … Ontario is set to repeat the mistakes of Alberta, a province that saw wait times increase and total surgical volumes decline as public funding and staffing were diverted into investor-owned centres.

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Family doctors are suffering and so are their patients

Monday, November 13th, 2023

The money that family doctors make is at the very bottom of the range of all physicians’ pay… when we are responsible for all the overhead costs of operating a clinic, which are rising every year, and our fees don’t increase to keep up, the difference has to be made up somewhere and it comes out of the doctor’s pocket… it is getting harder and harder to operate a financially sustainable family medicine practice.

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Canada has more doctors than ever — but access is worse. Why is that?

Thursday, November 2nd, 2023

Governments may fund primary health care, but they don’t make the work rules. Those are made mainly by doctors. Medicare still makes sense. Public payment reduces administrative costs while eliminating financial barriers. But because of Medicare’s policy legacies, even doubling the number of doctors would not provide the access we deserve. We need to change the way physicians do their work.

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Making preventive care fair: New approaches like self-testing at home can save lives and promote health equity

Wednesday, October 11th, 2023

We could start with preventive care in redesigning health care for those who need it the most… Governments and large health-care institutions have all made grand statements about the need to tackle sexism, racism, ableism and other forms of discrimination. It is long past time for those institutions to fund and support specific actions to help those who have been disadvantaged by previous inaction.

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This is why you don’t have a family doctor

Monday, September 4th, 2023

The process of becoming a doctor in Canada is… entrusted to numerous ministries, universities, colleges, councils, professional organizations and accrediting agencies… In the absence of consolidated oversight for the final product, the sheer number of participants in the process makes it very difficult to achieve significant reform. We are, in fact, facing… an unwillingness to abandon previously successful practices. 

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What would you rather have: Too many doctors, or too few?

Friday, August 18th, 2023

There’s more than just supply and demand…  There is no perfect system. There is no getting around the need for incentives and management to discourage abuses and encourage good service…  To save medicare, we must get the incentives right.

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