Archive for the ‘Health Delivery System’ Category
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Eric Hoskins’ legacy for Ontario patients
… while health ministry officials like to talk about making patient and caregiver concerns one of their key priorities, the reality is much different. Instead, hospitals and doctors and drug companies often get top billing when it comes to input into new policies and regulations. “Health ministry officials can shape policy, but there is no one in the bureaucracy whose prime role is to represent the patient voice and who is savvy about policy,”
Tags: featured, Health, ideology, mental Health, rights, standard of living
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Canada comes up short in international survey of family doctors
Areas for concern include timely access to family doctors and waits to see specialists, as well as price barriers to prescription drugs and other out-of-pocket expenses. The report also says Canadian family doctors had more difficulty co-ordinating care with specialists, hospitals and home-care providers – a key finding given the increasing emphasis the provinces and the federal government are placing on home and community care.
Tags: Health, jurisdiction, mental Health, standard of living
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Crafting a better health accord
The main obstacle preventing substantive health-care reform in Canada is not a lack of money, but the inability of provincial governments to stand up against the various interest groups (including labour groups and private corporations) that want to protect the status quo… practical ways to re-balance the scope of public coverage in Canadian health care: in particular, by shifting a greater share of available public resources towards drugs, continuing care and mental health, rather than insisting on covering all hospital and doctor costs.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, mental Health, pharmaceutical
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Time to reinvent health-care for the digital age
… nearly every health organization in Canada has talking points about patient engagement and empowerment. But for the most part it’s just talk… only 14 per cent of Canadian doctors reported having the ability to share test results with doctors outside their practice… smartphones, tablets and other bits of technology… are combining with big and small data to democratize self-management in health care in the same way personal computers unleashed information technology to the masses two decades ago.
Tags: budget, disabilities, Health, ideology, participation, standard of living
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Meet Growing Demand for Elderly Care With “Cash” Vouchers and Self-Directed Funding
… more than 15 percent of all acute-care hospital beds in Canada are filled every day with patients waiting for care in a location outside a hospital, costing provincial governments slightly under $3 billion per year… Canada must encourage a greater role for patients in choosing their care paths, and doing so means expanding access to a more self-directed, voucher based system. “The time to adopt new systems of supportive services for the elderly is now – before many more retiring babyboomers start drawing heavily on them”
Tags: budget, disabilities, economy, Health, ideology, participation
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Ottawa seeks to join provinces to cut cost of prescription drugs
The federal government is set to join the provinces in lowering the cost of prescription drugs by co-ordinating their purchases, a move that could signal a new era of co-operation between Ottawa and provincial leaders… Federal drug programs that cover the military, First Nations and inmates make Ottawa the fifth-largest spender on pharmaceuticals in Canada, Dr. Philpott said. “We will be a major buyer that will be coming to the table and participating in the bulk purchasing
Tags: budget, disabilities, economy, featured, Health, jurisdiction, mental Health, pharmaceutical, standard of living
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Let’s remember who we’re trying to help
Everyone agrees that the current system does not meet many patients’ needs and is unsustainable… If dementia makes it too difficult or unsafe for my family to care for me, I don’t want my new home to be an understaffed general hospital. We have to do better. We need effective resources in our communities to promote prevention and provide end-of-life care. But to get there we need to stop fighting, listen to each other and remember who we’re trying to help.
Tags: budget, disabilities, Health, mental Health
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Canada is failing to deliver health-care services in a timely manner. Here’s why
First… When the system fails, patients have no recourse. Private options are few and far between and they are generally unavailable to the majority of the population… Second, there are limited incentives to use the services responsibly… Third, there are actually incentives that restrict the supply of services… Fourth, there are too many bottlenecks… referral(s)… wait times… patients stuck in hospitals because… there is no appropriate place for them to be discharged to.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, mental Health, standard of living
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It’s time to listen to patients and caregivers
… in Ontario, for instance, we have 16 assistant deputy ministers of health, each charged with important portfolios: community care, hospitals, drugs, etc. It is high time for an assistant deputy minister of patient and caregiver experience. This high-ranking official would be charged with ensuring that patient and caregiver priorities, preferences, and experiences inform policy decisions so that the dog is wagging the tail and not the other way around.
Tags: Health, ideology, mental Health, participation, standard of living
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The plan to reboot health care, home care in Ontario
The current system operates in silos that appear impervious to the province’s 14 existing Local Health Integration Networks — little-known LHINs that have never lived up to their name because they failed to truly integrate patient care. The most glaring gap … has been a lack of control over family physicians who act as gatekeepers for services. Now, the ministry is finally prepared to make most primary-care doctors — the roughly 75 per cent of family physicians who work in clinics and teams — more accountable to government by bringing them under LHINs.
Tags: budget, disabilities, featured, Health, mental Health
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