Archive for the ‘Health Delivery System’ Category
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The upside of no-frills Canadian health care
Almost all hospitals in this country are non-for-profit entities. They receive lump-sum “global budgets,” so every patient is a cost generator, not a revenue source. That’s why there are few of the retail-service bells and whistles of the kind you see in cushy American hospitals. The goal in Canada is to heal the patient as quickly and effectively as possible, and get them out the door, prescription in hand, for home healing.
Tags: Health, standard of living
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Health care blind spots on both sides [US/CA]
Canadians ration by need; Americans ration by price and will continue to do so as the ACA is implemented. Because it’s publicly funded, Canadian health care is more equitable… [but] Drug benefits are quite unequal in Canada, and the lack of them is a pretty big hole for about 10 per cent of the population. There is no universal drug benefit, although two provinces have mandatory drug insurance — you can get it from an employer or buy it from a public plan.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, mental Health, pharmaceutical, poverty, standard of living
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Ontario is right to give nurses and pharmacists a bigger role
Ontario’s doctors are straining to handle their patient loads… Yet they are resisting any move by nurses orpharmacists to take over routine medical tasks such as ordering lab tests, giving vaccines and treating minor ailments… Health Minister Deb Matthews has made it clear she intends to keep expanding the role of nurses, nurse-practitioners and pharmacists in Ontario’s health-care system… free[ing] up doctors to concentrate on serious illnesses and give[ing] patients more options.
Tags: Health, ideology, standard of living
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More dollars for doctors won’t improve access to health Care
If the current investments in physician compensation was intended to improve the accessibility of medical care, then the data from Quebec show that this was a policy failure. Not only was there no improvement, but the problem actually worsened… It is time that these investments are monitored, analysed and publicly debated. Throwing money at a problem, is not always a solution.
Tags: budget, featured, Health, ideology, standard of living
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To rein in health costs, rein in salaries
Physicians’ costs ($31.4-billion) are the third biggest charge to health care, after drugs ($34.5-billion) and hospitals ($62.6-billion). Doctors’ share of the health-care pie rose to 14.8 per cent in 2013 from 13 per cent in 2005… “Increases in physician fees have been above rates of inflation.” From 2005 to 2011, physician incomes went up faster than hospital budgets or drugs… Those increases were larger than wage gains for other health and social-service workers, except nurses
Tags: budget, Health, pharmaceutical, standard of living
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Ontario midwives take legal action for pay equity
Ontario’s midwives have filed a human rights complaint against the province, arguing they’ve been subject to gender discrimination and robbed of fair pay for almost two decades… The profession, almost exclusively female, wants the tribunal to put in place a pay equity mechanism that fairly reflects midwives’ role relative to other health-care workers, such as the mostly male family physicians in community health centres.
Tags: Health, ideology, rights, standard of living, women
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Listen when Canada’s emergency doctors warn of a crisis
A major factor congealing patient flow in a hospital’s emergency department is a lack of acute care beds elsewhere in the facility… so they languish in ER… More available beds are needed, and one way to get them is to do a more efficient job of moving hospital patients in need of long-term care into more appropriate facilities… this shift of chronically ill patients (commonly called “bed-blockers”) should be a local, provincial and national priority.
Tags: budget, Health, standard of living
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Clarifying health care spending [CCACs]
The Ontario government spends $2.2 billion per year on home care — about 4 per cent of the total health-care budget. Of every dollar that Community Care Access Centres receive, 91.3 cents are spent on delivering health-care services directly to patients. The CCACs’ general administrative costs have been reduced from 4.6 per cent three years ago to 4.4 per cent at present. In addition, only a small portion of the CCACs’ budget — 1.5 per cent — is spent on office and clinic space, and 2.3 per cent is spent on information technology.
Tags: budget, Health, mental Health, standard of living
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Searching for the truth in health spending [CCACs]
Officially, Community Care Access Centres (CCAC) in Ontario claim they spend 91 cents of every dollar they receive from the provincial government on direct client care… in fact it may be barely 50 cents once the overhead, executive salaries and profits of the private companies… are taken into consideration. If true, that means up to half of the funds designated to help patients never reach the nurses, physiotherapists, speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists and personal support workers who actually treat patients.
Tags: budget, Health, mental Health, privatization, standard of living
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Number of specialized doctors who are unemployed growing, study finds
Heart surgeons, radiation oncologists and eye doctors are among a growing number of specialized physicians who can’t find work in Canada despite long wait times for surgeries and appointments… the crisis may lead to another round of brain drain — the exodus of talented young doctors from Canada — and a more recent phenomenon called “brain waste”… when new specialists work several part-time jobs
Tags: Health, mental Health, standard of living
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