Posts Tagged ‘Health’

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Indigenous health care needs won’t be served by Ford government’s plan

Saturday, July 6th, 2019

… by centralizing health care decisions, the Ontario government is… returning to a top-down approach where health-care needs are decided by the few for the many… The new agency threatens to derail nearly three years of negotiations between Ontario, the federal government and Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) concerning turning over decision-making power about health care to 49 northern nations so they can bring health-care services closer to home… Suicide, diabetes, addiction and food insecurity must be tackled by Indigenous people for Indigenous people.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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…

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The world needs more Greta Thunbergs

Friday, June 28th, 2019

Ms. Thunberg began by offering some sobering perspectives on the greatest plague facing mankind, such as the fact that roughly 100 companies are responsible for emitting just over 70 per cent of our total carbon-dioxide emissions. And the fact that the richest 10 per cent of the world’s population emit about half of the planet’s total emissions and the wealthiest 1 per cent emit more than the poorest 50 per cent… “People who have a lot of power. People who consume enormous amounts of stuff, who often fly around the world, sometimes in private jets.”

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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.

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