Archive for the ‘Health’ Category

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Why dentists are not signing up for the Canadian Dental Care Plan

Saturday, July 20th, 2024

It is time organized dentistry take their professional responsibility seriously, and stop swaying dentists away from the CDCP… There is a long history of organized dentistry opposing public dental care—much like how physicians opposed universal healthcare when it was first rolled out. Since organized dentistry has a history of opposing public delivery of dental care, they are more likely to negotiate in good faith out of concern of this public delivery model being scaled up if private dentists do not sign up for the program.

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Convenient access to alcohol is going to cost us

Wednesday, June 12th, 2024

… while alcohol sales in 2020 put $3.2 billion into Ontario’s coffers, they came at a cost of $7.1 billion. That left the province with an alcohol deficit of $3.9 billion. Health care accounted for $2.3 billion. The rest went to servicing alcohol-related criminal-justice and lost production costs. These figures reflect a deficit capped by the limited number of LCBO and Beer Stores, a limit that will soon cease to exist.

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Ontario’s health-care system is in crisis. More privatization isn’t the answer

Thursday, June 6th, 2024

We know that private, for-profit chains will come to dominate our health-care system if we let them. It’s already happening. That’s a recipe for poorer services, higher costs, and worse outcomes. We could achieve better results for less by removing the profit motive and focusing on community clinics run on a not-for-profit basis… instead of headed and run from a distance by some faceless, profit-maximizing firm.

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The Doctor Dilemma: Improving Primary Care Access in Canada

Monday, May 27th, 2024

Addressing the primary care access gap involves five strategies… : 1) expanding the number of training positions and filling the unfilled residency spots with international medical graduates; 2) reducing the administrative burden for family physicians; 3) providing alternate payment models; 4) expanding the scope of practice of other primary care providers; and 5) expanding team-based models of care.

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How Canada can fix primary care crisis

Thursday, May 23rd, 2024

In every neighbourhood in the country, just as there are schools for our children, there should be a primary-care home — or centre — served by a team of doctors, nurse practitioners, nurses, dieticians, therapists, social workers, and others. Each person has an ongoing relationship with a primary-care clinician in this publicly funded team. The team is connected to other parts of the health system and social services. It’s a one-stop shop for your health related needs.

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We need to revolutionize how we organize health care in Canada

Friday, April 19th, 2024

… “achieving high value for patients must become the overarching goal of health care delivery, with value defined as the health outcomes per dollar spent.” … Our government should focus less on who they are paying, and more on what they want to buy… This would facilitate innovations in care delivery across the system, and allow for more investment in integrated care programs that span the full continuum. Funding could focus on all-in coverage… including drugs, home care and virtual innovations.

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Protecting public health care from private investors

Wednesday, April 10th, 2024

In Canada, a single private equity firm already owns the largest national network of independent surgical centres — 53 operating rooms spread across 14 centres — in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and B.C… Approximately 90 per cent are publicly funded through partnerships with provincial health systems… Should profit-driven investors own health care facilities?

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Cutting ER wait times? There’s an app for that

Saturday, March 30th, 2024

One prescription for improving the health of the urgent care sector: AI and virtual emergency departments are cutting wait times in the real ones… Researchers programmed AI into an app to determine which patients are most urgently in need of care… [plus] online emergency department bookings… with a list of criteria to determine if their condition allows for a short wait before receiving care… [and the use of] data points to boost staff at more demanding times.

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Can new approaches to medical curriculum solve the family doctor shortage?

Friday, March 22nd, 2024

Three new medical schools and an innovative family medicine program look to alleviate a crisis in primary care… Team-based or multidisciplinary care is… an approach that the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) wants provinces to adopt, and soon… While the new medical programs hold a lot of promise for alleviating the family doctor shortage… solving it entirely is a collective responsibility that extends to and beyond all medical schools in Canada.

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Expanded prescribing powers for nurses makes sense

Tuesday, March 12th, 2024

Expanding prescribing powers to nurses will not present the same kinds of concerns as expanding to pharmacists did. Nurses work in clinics that have privacy, and they lack potential financial conflicts of interest. Plus, they’re currently limited to very routine prescriptions, so the danger of a blown diagnosis is minimal… the goal is not leaving any to suffer for lack of access to a safe, proven treatment. And that is absolutely the status quo that already exists today for millions.

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