Archive for the ‘Health’ Category

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Children and teens might hide their mental-health struggles. But adults can’t look away

Saturday, January 25th, 2020

… bullying; verbal, physical and sexual abuse; poverty; family violence; parental illness; and more recently, excessive exposure to social media, can all contribute to poorer mental-health outcomes in children. Despite… the progress we’ve made as a society to destigmatize mental illness, many children and teens continue to hide their distress from their families and peers because they feel either ashamed or that they can sort it out themselves.

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Some of Ontario’s biggest hospitals are filled beyond capacity nearly every day, new data reveals

Thursday, January 23rd, 2020

On any day, one out of six hospital beds is occupied by a patient who doesn’t need to be in hospital, but cannot be safely discharged home. This is a long-running phenomenon in health systems across Canada known as “alternate level of care” (ALC). Lengthy waits for long-term care spaces are the chief cause, but a lack of available home care and other forms of continuing care also contributes.

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Fear and division really are bad for our health

Monday, January 20th, 2020

If you take fear and division and add a dose of cynicism about experts and government you produce an excellent culture medium for anxiety. Anxiety is bad for our health. A smoker loses on average 8.5 years of life. Anxiety can decrease your life expectancy by 7… When things seem more predictable, we feel more in control and we are less anxious.

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Ontario hospitals ask for nearly $1 billion to ease hallway health-care problem

Saturday, January 18th, 2020

“Ontario hospitals are the most efficient in the entire country”… the additional $922 million sought for 141 publicly-funded hospitals represents an increase of 4.85 per cent. “You can’t expect to end hallway health care and keep asking hospitals to cut their expenditures and become more efficient given what the data shows. Our backs are against the wall here.”

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Updates on the Ontario Health Agency

Thursday, January 16th, 2020

In the past few months, steps have been taken towards expanding and further prescribing the role of Ontario Health… [and] implementing Ontario Health’s mandate. These steps include new regulations under the CCA and a number of transfer orders issued by the Minister of Health (the “Minister”). This bulletin provides a summary of the recent developments.

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Assessing Ottawa’s New Health Mandate

Friday, January 10th, 2020

… why not identify and put your emphasis on issues squarely in the federal jurisdiction, such as the socio-economic determinants of health? Addressing poverty and other deleterious conditions in certain populations would be the greatest contribution your government could make to better health of Canadians.

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Resolution on social housing benefit provides hope for many in 2020

Wednesday, January 1st, 2020

There are few things more important to health than a roof over one’s head. Life expectancy for a homeless person is substantially worse than for the general population and 57 per cent of homeless people in Toronto have a chronic medical condition… living in ill-maintained housing increases the risk of accidents due to unsafe structures, infestations such as mice, cockroaches, and a variety of infections…

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Just what the doctor ordered: How AI will change medicine in the 2020s

Saturday, December 28th, 2019

Perhaps the principal short-term impact for deep learning and AI tools would be to liberate doctors and patients from keyboards, their common enemy that markedly detracts from real human interaction… with smartwatch algorithms… common, non-serious conditions that can be diagnosed by patients with algorithms will grow, cultivating more autonomy for willing patients and, as a result, less requirement for doctor visits.

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Should government have a say in what drugs are prescribed to patients?

Wednesday, December 18th, 2019

Canada is slow to approve new biosimilars; since 2006, Health Canada has approved only six, compared with 13 approvals by the European Medicines Agency. We also have among the highest prices in the world for both biologics and biosimilars, so more co-ordinated and aggressive price negotiations are required.

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CMHA Ontario provides recommendations on Bill 116

Tuesday, December 17th, 2019

The Ontario government’s proposed Mental Health and Addictions Centre of Excellence must focus on implementing core mental health and addictions services provincially, rigorous data collection and health quality improvement initiatives… CMHA Ontario… also advised that any funds recouped from opioid manufacturers through litigation would be best directed to front-line addictions care…

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