Archive for the ‘Health Delivery System’ Category
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Nurse practitioners lead a quiet revolution in Ontario hospitals
Times have certainly changed… a nurse practitioner, equipped with the authority to admit and discharge patients, order diagnostic tests and prescribe certain drugs… “This is acute care versus family practice,” says Van Dusen, who has worked the past decade as an NP in community clinics… Now, I’m getting to treat the people that I used to send to emerg. The upside of this is that these people are going to get in and out quicker.
Tags: budget, Health
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Time to freeze pay of health-sector CEOs
… these increases… are an insult to the tens of thousands of low-paid therapists, personal support workers and nurses who actually provide face-to-face care to patients. Many of them earn less than $20,000 a year and haven’t seen a pay raise in years.
Worse, the highly paid executives who get huge raises are the very people who complain about lack of health-care funds, who squeeze private service providers for more services for less money and who demand cost-cutting in their own operations.
Tags: budget, Health, mental Health, tax
Posted in Health Delivery System | 1 Comment »
Why Ontario’s medical tourism threatens medicare
Doctors are paid the OHIP rate plus “a small premium.” Like Sunnybrook, the University Health Network says it plows any profits back into member hospitals… So what’s the problem? The first has to do with resources. There are only a finite number of physicians, nurses and hospital beds in Ontario… Medicare is based on the notion that access is determined by need rather than wealth, that the sickest are treated first. Medical tourism turns this principle on its head.
Tags: budget, globalization, Health, ideology, privatization, standard of living
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Do we get our money’s worth for what we pay doctors?
The take-home message from the auditor-general’s report is that we need to rebuild the physician compensation model, from the ground up. Until we have definitions and goals and measurement, we can’t say if money is being spent wisely. Mr. Jones is not saying that physicians are overpaid or that what they are doing is not valuable. He is saying that, just as we promote the practice of evidence-based medicine, we should strive for evidence-based payment of medical practitioners.
Tags: budget, featured, Health, ideology, standard of living
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Ontario’s auditor should investigate spending in home-care system
CEO salaries are jumping between 50 and 144 per cent, with some top executives earning nearly $300,000 a year. Despite this, most personal support workers — the front-line staff patients rely upon for the majority of their care — earn just $20,000 a year. It’s a stark example of flawed priorities. At the same time, sick and vulnerable patients begging for care are refused services, often because the CCAC computer model, with its financially strict definition of need, rules out humane treatment.
Tags: budget, disabilities, Health, ideology, mental Health, standard of living
Posted in Health Delivery System | 2 Comments »
Kathleen Wynne must clean up home-care mess
Wynne should start by ordering an immediate wage freeze on top CCAC and LHIN executives, setting up a full audit and review of all CCAC operations, cancelling all planned cuts to current home-care services, especially rehab services, and demanding major funding increases for home care in the coming provincial budget.
Tags: budget, disabilities, Health, ideology, mental Health, participation, privatization, standard of living
Posted in Health Delivery System | 1 Comment »
How MPP Kevin Flynn became a mental health crusader
The committee members… set aside their party loyalties and worked single-mindedly toward the same goal… so did their determination to submit a report the government could not ignore… They kept it short – 21 pages – and readable… [with] 23 precise recommendations. Within months… the government moved on the committee’s two most urgent recommendations; immediate action to stem the flow of prescription opioids (chiefly OxyContin) and a children’s mental health strategy with dedicated funding.
Tags: Health, mental Health, standard of living, youth
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Ontario to stop soaring raises for health sector CEOs
… “our government has committed to introduce legislation early this year to directly control the compensation of senior executives across the broader public sector, including sector-specific salary caps.” … In 2012, the average salary of chief executive officers at the 14 CCACs in Ontario was $234,000… In contrast… personal support workers, earn less than $20,000 and haven’t had a raise in years – and many have seen their income drop in the past decade.
Tags: budget, disabilities, Health, mental Health, standard of living, tax
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Why community paramedicine saves both money and lives
Ontario recently announced a $6-million investment in community paramedicine that will allow the expansion of programs that target seniors who call 9-1-1 frequently. Instead of waiting for the all-too-predictable calls to come, paramedics will proactively visit their homes to check vital signs, to make sure they are taking medications as prescribed, and to refer them to appropriate home-care services.
Tags: budget, disabilities, Health, mental Health, standard of living
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Kathleen Wynne fails to act on growing health-care mess
Increasingly, health-care experts are crying out for a total reorganization of the current home-care system, including shutting down the Community Care Access Centre system that governs home care across the province.… the CCACs have grown out of control, with soaring executive salaries, bloated bureaucracies and duplicated services… CCAC executives can make unilateral health-care decisions, often slashing funding for critical services, such as physiotherapy, in an effort to balance their budgets.
Tags: budget, disabilities, Health, standard of living
Posted in Health Delivery System | 1 Comment »
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