Over the last fifty years, doctors have been making fewer and fewer house calls. There is little doubt that patients value physician house calls, particularly from a doctor with whom they have an ongoing relationship. Lack of appropriate training and mentors, financial disincentives, and the changing culture of family medicine are all barriers to increasing …
An integrated, coordinated system of trauma care has been shown to reduce injury-related deaths by improving timely access to specialized care There is, however, wide variation in how long it takes to get a severely injured patient to a trauma centre in Ontario. Trauma systems improve by systematically assessing performance and outcomes. Ontario does not …
Every year nearly 5,000 Ontarians are injured through trauma and require specialized trauma care, which has been proven to save lives. Many Ontarians think that they can access specialized trauma care at their local emergency department. This is not true. Timely access to specialized trauma care does not always occur in Ontario. Melanie Carter was …
It is inaccurate to say that Canada has an entirely publicly funded health care system. While often described as a publicly-funded system, only about 70% of health care costs are paid for publicly, with the remaining 30% paid for privately. In Ontario, medically necessary hospital and physician costs are entirely covered by the public health care system. …
Each year one in five Ontarians visits one of the province’s 163 emergency departments. A recent study has shown that those who present to emergency departments when waiting times are longer have worse outcomes. Since 2008, Ontario has spent a lot of money and effort to reduce waiting times and improve the quality of care …
The Canada Health Act includes public coverage of services provided in hospitals and by doctors, but not prescription medications taken outside of hospital. Most provincial drug plans do provide some public coverage, but many Canadians lack drug coverage. In the last 25 years, prescription medications have become both more important and more expensive. Bringing prescription …
In many provinces across Canada the authority and governance of health care has been moved to regional authorities, based on the belief that local authorities can better integrate and coordinate services, and contain costs. Ontario created 14 Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs) in 2006, with the mandate to plan, fund and integrate health care services …
Midwives provide high quality care for normal, low risk pregnancy and child birth, but provide this care to relatively few women in Ontario. The demand for midwifery services is outstripping capacity. The philosophy and actual practice of care provided by midwives and obstetricians is different. Obstetricians deliver many more babies, but obstetrician-led care is more …
Complementary and alternative medicine is a billion dollar business in Canada. Complementary and alternative medicine is rooted in different philosophies and standards of evidence than mainstream medicine. Many patients use both systems of medicine. Complementary and alternative medicine is defined as any medical system, product or practice that is not thought of as a standard …
Colon cancer screening is more effective than breast cancer screening, but uptake in Ontario is still low. Screening more individuals each year would prevent many needless deaths. Nurses can safely and effectively screen patients for colon cancer. Despite this, efforts to increase the number of screening procedures performed by nurses in Ontario are not widespread. …
There is a striking paradox: while most Ontarians prefer to die at home, around 60% die in hospital. Only 30% of Canadians near the end of their life use palliative care services. Many experts believe that providing greater resources for palliative care does not currently appear to be an Ontario or federal government priority. Roger …
New drugs are developed every month, and doctors are continuously bombarded with information. Much of this information is provided by pharmaceutical sales representatives who visit doctors’ offices, sponsor lectures and give out medication samples. Are these encounters in the best interest of patients and the health care system? We went out to the street and …
Many politicians, doctors and the public believe that aging of the population is the main cause of increased health care costs. If this is true, this paints an exceptionally worrying picture about the sustainability of health care in the future. However, somewhat surprisingly, the majority of researchers don’t believe that aging plays a major role …
Walking through the streets of any large city, one sees many homeless people. Nearly two in three have a history of some form of mental illness. Hospitals have become the place where homeless people with serious mental illness go during a crisis, but hospitals are poorly equipped to meet their needs. How can society improve …
The 2004 Health Accord agreed to a total transfer of $41 billion of federal money to the provinces and territories for health care over a ten year period. This transfer ends in 2014 when the accord expires. The legacy of the Health Accord is mixed. There have been improvements in wait times for some operations …
Polls suggest that health care is the most important issue to Canadians in the upcoming federal election. However, in Canada, health care delivery is largely the responsibility of the provinces and territories. The 2004 Health Accord invested $41 billion of federal dollars in health. What were the outcomes of this federal investment in health? History …
The Centre for Innovation in Complex Care hosted a debate on April 8, 2011 focused on the resolution that “the single most important step in improving hospital quality is having physicians paid and employed by hospitals.” Healthydebate.ca covered this issue on April 6, with a story on How Hospital Doctors Be Paid? At the debate, …
Doctors are a significant portion of the costs for the health care system. In 2009, almost a quarter of Ontario’s health care budget was spent on paying doctors. Most doctors who work in hospitals are not paid by the hospital directly, but by the Ontario Health Insurance Plan, which pays doctors for each procedure and clinical service. …
Patients are increasingly interested in reading the information in their own medical records. Canadian laws and existing technologies support this in principle. However, most patients are not yet easily able to access their medical records in practice. Canadians today have easy access to a range of systems that store their personal information. The difference between …
Genetic profiles are being offered directly to consumers online for relatively reasonable sums of money. These websites are not yet widely known to Canadian consumers. Doctors and the public need to be educated to better understand what the results of these tests mean. E-commerce has exploded over the past decade, and now you can buy …