Archive for the ‘Health’ Category
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Doctors’ perspective on billings in Ontario
Wednesday, July 10th, 2019
Focusing on how much each health care provider bills or earns without context, and without a broader plan to address system-wide issues, may result in additionally fragmented care and stress on Ontario’s health care system. Ontarians need professional health care providers with a range of skills to help reduce wait times. No health care provider wants to see longer wait times or more fragmented care.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, mental Health, standard of living
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
Ontario wants to expand midwives’ ability to prescribe medications
Tuesday, July 9th, 2019
Ontario wants to give midwives across the province the ability to prescribe a wider variety medications, a move those in the profession say could help improve patient care. Health Minister Christine Elliott said Monday that consultations are underway to expand midwives’ scope of practice with the body that regulates the profession. She said the province wants to enable midwives to use their education and training more effectively.
Tags: Health, ideology, jurisdiction, pharmaceutical, standard of living, women
Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »
Make pharmacare a priority in the federal election
Tuesday, July 9th, 2019
The upcoming election debate on this issue should address key implementation issues including: Identifying the goalposts and the mechanism for achieving the desired outcome. The role of the federal government, subnational governments and the private sector. Who pays for the incremental costs and how will it be financed. The mechanism to get buy-ins from all subnational governments. A universal system only works if all subnational governments participate in it.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, mental Health, participation, pharmaceutical, standard of living, tax
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
Having better health care than the U.S. shouldn’t be good enough for Canadians
Sunday, July 7th, 2019
We need to stop settling for “better-than-America” and aim for “as good as much of Europe.” We also need to realize that there are ways to improve the system that are not either “just throw ever-more public dollars at the problems” and “burn medicare to the ground and pay for everything out of pocket.” If we ignore them while they’re still fixable — when the economy is good, there’s no weird epidemics afoot and the full impact of the upcoming demographic shift hasn’t yet hit — we’ll pay for it later.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, mental Health, standard of living, tax
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Overview of the Second Report of the Premier’s Council on Improving Healthcare and Ending Hallway Medicine: Part I
Friday, July 5th, 2019
This advice is responsive to certain of the issues raised by the First Report, including the Council’s finding that Ontario’s health care system is not working to its potential. Among the advice offered by the Council through the Report is a list of 10 recommendations to improve health care… grouped into the following four categories: Integration / Innovation / Efficiency & Alignment / Capacity
Tags: budget, disabilities, featured, Health, ideology, mental Health, standard of living
Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »
Big hurdles remain in pharmacare implementation plan
Wednesday, July 3rd, 2019
The national pharmacare advisory council’s ambitious report presents a staged, eight-year plan to reduce drug costs and make public drug coverage universal with the participation of the provinces. But there are major stumbling blocks ahead. The report is silent on how the initiative would be paid for; it proposes a convoluted and unequal federal funding transfer to encourage provincial and territorial participation; and, it makes potentially naïve assumptions about how private insurers will react to the expansion of public drug insurance.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, Health, ideology, mental Health, participation, pharmaceutical, standard of living, tax
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
Ontario health quality will suffer under the Peoples Health Act
Wednesday, July 3rd, 2019
The board of Ontario Health seems to think that only front-line workers are needed to provide health care and the back-office staff responsible for measuring and comparing quality as well as holding clinical programs accountable for high quality results can be disposed of. It is naïve to think that busy clinicians can both provide care and do the data collection and analysis that quality improvement requires without back office support.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, mental Health, standard of living
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
Time for Ontario to make drug company payments public
Tuesday, July 2nd, 2019
When pharmaceutical companies dole out millions of dollars to doctors, hospitals, universities and others working in the public health care system, it should be done in a public way to maintain trust that it’s all above board. And not just for 10 big drug companies, but all of them. Ontario has already passed legislation to make that happen — if only the Doug Ford government would enact the regulations to bring it into force…
Tags: featured, Health, ideology, jurisdiction, mental Health, pharmaceutical
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
Transparency on what doctors bill OHIP informs the health-care debate
Friday, June 28th, 2019
The public benefit that comes from greater transparency around OHIP billings is clear. It will help to inform the debate about how Ontario spends its health care dollars and whether the current payment structure overvalues some medical services at the expense of others… Are we achieving the best health care outcomes for the dollars we spend? Is there a better way? … Opening up the system to public scrutiny can only help to build a stronger health-care system for patients and doctors alike.
Tags: budget, economy, Health, ideology, mental Health
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
Should there be ‘presumed consent’ for organ donations?
Wednesday, June 26th, 2019
Yes – Ontario, with these things in place, has seen donation rates double to 25 donors per million (DPM). Could an “opt-out” approach help Canada get from a donor rate of 22 DPM toward 40 DPM, the rates in the most successful countries in the world? / No – loosening permission requirements around donation could strike the more circumspect among us as too much boundary revision, too fast, with too little accountability.
Tags: Health, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, rights
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
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