Health Delivery System « Social Policy in Ontario

Archive for the ‘Health Delivery System’ Category

Read this report before you slag Canada’s healthcare system

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

May 18, 2011
… health involves more than doctors, hospitals and drugs… Japan’s high life expectancy is related more to diet than anything else… it points out that the countries with some of the worst health outcomes are often those with the most poverty… infant mortality among advanced nations may have little to do with our health care system and much to do with the fact that our poverty rate is almost as high as America’s… overall, the Conference Board report doesn’t concentrate on medicare. It says we should deal with poverty, eat more vegetables and be more active.

Tags: budget, featured, Health, ideology, mental Health, privatization
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Spine surgery can become much more efficient

Tuesday, May 17th, 2011

May. 15, 2011
About 90 per cent of back- and neck-pain patients sent to spine surgeons don’t have a medical condition that can be corrected through an operation… The waste manifested in hospitals across Canada illustrates a central flaw in how health services are organized: around those who provide treatment, not those who require it. Patient-centred care is just a slogan, not a reality… Under the proposal… Physiotherapists, chiropractors and other health-care providers working in 15 spine-assessment centres would weed out those patients who are surgical candidates…

Tags: budget, Health
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Bell’s $10-million donation hailed as mental-health game-changer

Sunday, May 15th, 2011

May. 12, 2011
CAMH is in the midst of a massive redevelopment that is transforming its archaic facilities on Queen Street in Toronto into a modern campus where clinicians, researchers and educators will work side-by-side with patients in a supportive environment… The new corporate gift will pay for the Bell Gateway Building that will serve as the “front door” to the new campus. George Cope, president and CEO of Bell and BCE Inc., said he hopes the large and visible donation will encourage others to follow suit. “We felt this was an area where we could use our brand to make a difference.”

Tags: budget, ideology, mental Health, standard of living
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Self-fulfilling prophets of health-care doom

Sunday, May 15th, 2011

May 15 2011
The political elites are engaged in a game of self-fulfilling prophecy. Straight-line cost projections and guaranteed federal revenue increases will ensure the cost increases they project. Canadians need government to bend the cost curve, not fund it. We need to figure out how we can shift gears and deliver more value for the tax dollars spent. We have successfully done so before and we can do so again… Fortunately, our challenge this decade is different. Then it was about fixing hospital care; now, we must harvest productivity gains from new technologies and virtualization of care.

Tags: budget, Health, mental Health, rights, standard of living
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Canada must abandon its health-care monopoly

Saturday, May 14th, 2011

May 14, 2011
The non-partisan Conference Board of Canada has released a new study enumerating the weaknesses in Canada’s public health-care system. In short, the report says that while Canada spends a lot on public health care, our health outcomes are middling compared to other developed nations… Looking beyond lifestyle factors, creating better health outcomes for Canadians will mean finding the right balance between private and public care… Every country above us on the Conference Board’s list permits a better mixture of public and private spending on health.

Tags: budget, Health, ideology
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Health care: From entitlement to empowerment

Friday, May 13th, 2011

May 12 2011
Canadians understand clearly that our public health-care system is in deep trouble. We know that it is fiscally unsustainable. We know that other countries get better results for less money. We know that an aging population and new treatments keep driving up costs faster than our ability to pay. We know that the boundaries between what is covered and what is not are creating both inefficiencies and unfairness… Political will is important, but the reality is that there are no easy solutions, at least not ones that will work.

Tags: budget, Health, standard of living, tax
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eHealth: Half of Ontario health records to be electronic by 2013

Wednesday, May 11th, 2011

May 11, 2011
In two years, half of all Ontario residents will be able to walk into a health clinic and have a doctor access their up-to-date personal electronic health record. Ontario is actually awash with electronic records, but the problem has been that few systems can share information, Reed said… The entire province will eventually be covered in three regional hubs — one in the GTA, the others in northeastern and southwestern Ontario.

Tags: budget, Health, mental Health, standard of living
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It’s time to find a cure for the problem of how doctors are paid

Saturday, April 30th, 2011

Apr. 28, 2011
… the fastest-growing health expense in Canada is not drugs, it is physician services… there are more doctors – 68,100 and rising. In the last year alone, there has been a net gain of 2,700 physicians… Three-quarters of physician payments are made on a fee-for-service basis… it is open-ended. Physicians can see as many patients as they wish (or is practical) and bill for services rendered – even if that care could be more efficiently delivered by a nurse or pharmacist. It creates an incentive for over-consumption… a phenomenon known in the literature as supplier-induced demand.

Tags: budget, Health, ideology, mental Health, standard of living
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Shrinking Medicare, Expanding Poverty

Wednesday, April 27th, 2011

April 21, 2011
In 1975, spending on hospitals and doctors – the core medicare services – accounted for 60% of total health spending. In 2010 the figure was 41%. Governments fund only half of all other types of care and have deinsured medically necessary services such as optometric visits. But the biggest and growing gap in the system is in the care of seniors: prescription drugs, home care, and long-term residential care, known as LTC… the system is stingy with inexpensive home care and more generous in providing expensive institutional care. It’s a classic lose-lose: worse for the person, and more costly for the public.

Tags: budget, disabilities, featured, Health, ideology, poverty, privatization, standard of living
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Health reforms

Thursday, April 21st, 2011

Apr. 20, 2011
That the federal government and the provinces focused only on filling the so-called “Romanow gap” in system funding rather than on engaging the hard choices Mr. Romanow proposed should not be blamed on the messenger. The commission had two goals. First was the accumulation of the best evidence available including 40 published research reports that ran the gamut of the ideological spectrum. The second was a multifaceted approach to getting citizens involved in thinking about not only what they needed from the system but also how it should be financed, organized and reformed.