Archive for the ‘Health Delivery System’ Category
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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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Ontario moves to scrap troubled health agencies, reorganize primary care
Under the proposed changes, the boards of the 14 CCACs “would cease to exist,” and care coordinators and other staff involved in delivering care would be employed by the LHINs but could be located with family health teams, community health centres or hospitals… CCAC management structures – criticized for their high salaries and large pay hikes – “would be reviewed,” the paper states, along with the management structure of the LHINs.
Tags: budget, featured, Health, ideology, mental Health
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At last, a champion for Ontario patients
… Health Minister Eric Hoskins has appointed Christine Elliott… Ontario’s first-ever patient ombudsman… to act as a powerful champion for patients, giving a voice to people who feel the health-care system has failed them… For decades, the Ontario health-care system has been planned, operated and overseen by doctors, hospital administrators, health ministry bureaucrats and executives in agencies such as the [LHINs and CCACs]… What’s been missing is the voice of patients and caregivers.
Tags: disabilities, featured, Health, jurisdiction, standard of living
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What’s holding up reforms to home-care mess?
The goal is to save more than $200 million by eliminating the bureaucracy-heavy CCACs, with their high-paid executives, and directing the savings to front-line services. More than 700,000 Ontario residents receive care annually at home or in community settings. The province spends $2.5 billion a year on home and community care… Clearly, Hoskins is dealing with a health-care establishment that is reluctant to change. That includes the CCACs, LHINs, doctors and his own bureaucrats.
Tags: budget, disabilities, Health, jurisdiction, standard of living
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How to save our health-care system from itself
In winter, CCACs routinely scale back patient treatments because they are low on cash as the fiscal year-end approaches. Quality control is out of control because different CCACs treat the same patient conditions differently, depending on geography. Two-thirds of home-care assessments weren’t conducted within promised deadlines, and some patients still hadn’t been reassessed in a year… And CCACs seem reluctant to crack down on private contractors who fail to deliver on nursing services as promised.
Tags: budget, Health, jurisdiction, standard of living
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Auditor warns of long home care wait times
Between 2008-09 and 2014-15, the health ministry increased home care spending by 42 per cent… Clients served increased 22 per cent… Meantime, 70 per cent of CCAC long-stay patients have complex care needs today, compared to fewer than 40 per cent five years ago… There are still no provincial standards for specifying the level of services clients with similar needs should get… [and] a backlog of inspections of nursing homes, following complaints and critical incidents…
Tags: budget, Health, jurisdiction, mental Health, standard of living
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How high-paid health bosses blew it
For years, patients have complained that the $2.5-billion-a-year home-care system was a mess, with too much bureaucracy, a drastic shortage of funds for face-to-face care, mismanagement, lack of oversight, uneven treatment and a culture of fear… the heady days for the CCAC executives came to a sudden halt when their skyrocketing salaries and stunning pay raises were revealed. In some cases, CCAC bosses were pay raises topping $65,000 a year, with salaries over $300,000.
Tags: budget, disabilities, Health, standard of living
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Honest talk about private health services is long overdue
The reality is that every universal health-care system in the world – including Canada’s – has a combination of public and private payment, and a blend of for-profit and not-for-profit delivery of services. The discussion we really need to have is what is in the so-called medicare basket of services and what is outside the publicly-funded basket. And what we need to do is not ban private care, but regulate it, as part of a broader, long-overdue reform.
Tags: budget, featured, Health, ideology, pharmaceutical, philanthropy, standard of living
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Bloated Ontario health agencies to face the axe
As a first step, [Health Minister Eric] Hoskins is expected to create a powerful task force in the next few weeks that will look at how best to shut down the CCACs, which simply aren’t working, and transfer their duties to other existing agencies, such as the 14 Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs), which oversee and fund CCACs, hospitals and other community health services… For years, health professionals… have argued that the CCACs are too costly, inefficient and bureaucratically top-heavy.
Tags: budget, Health
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Canada among top pharmaceutical spenders on OECD list
Pharmaceutical spending in Canada worked out to $713 (U.S.) a person in 2013, well above the OECD average of $515… Canada also has one of the lowest percentages of public coverage for pharmaceutical costs, the study found. Government plans covered 36 per cent of costs, with the remainder coming from private insurance plans (30 per cent) and individuals’ own pockets (34 per cent). Only the United States and Poland had a lower percentage of drug costs paid for by public programs.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, mental Health, pharmaceutical, standard of living
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