After a decade of focusing on access to health care services, the Ontario government appears to be turning its attention to improving the quality and costs of these services. At the moment, there is considerable variation in how health care is delivered in Ontario’s hospitals, so patients with the same diseases are receiving different qualtiy …
Transitioning my father from our home, to the hospital, and ultimately to long-term care hit us by surprise and we faced many challenges along the way. This is not a post about how to improve the system or a post about the challenges we faced. This is a post about the people who helped us …
The Personal Health Navigator is available to all Canadian patients. Questions about your doctor, hospital or how to navigate the health care system can be sent to AskLisa@Sunnybrook.ca The Question: I suspect I have acral melanoma on my foot and I want an excision biopsy done. Most family practitioners are unaware of what it is, and they …
Achieving high quality in a health care system, as in any other enterprise, requires that the factors necessary for success be defined, measured, continually monitored and openly reported. The good news is that almost all jurisdictions and professional bodies in Canada are beginning to take the quest for measureable high quality care seriously, albeit with …
Modern health care systems emerged in the late 19th Century from the ascendance of scientific medicine. The major killers at the time of Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur were infectious diseases such as anthrax, tuberculosis and typhoid fever. These scientists were among the first to identify the microorganisms that cause such disease and then to …
With so much money to be made if a Toronto casino is built, it’s no surprise that the health effects of increased gambling receive short shrift in the media compared to news of intense lobbying activities. Private investors, construction trades and companies, as well as the province and the city all stand to make money …
Canada is the only country in the world that provides universal public insurance for medical and hospital care but not for prescription drugs. Is this a desirable divide in health policy or a failing of our health care system? If the latter, what would our system ideally look like? In an effort to answer this …
The Personal Health Navigator is available to all Canadian patients. Questions about your doctor, hospital or how to navigate the health care system can be sent to AskLisa@Sunnybrook.ca The Question: I am a 66-year-old male in good physical condition with great annual check-up results and not on any medication. Yet, 7 months ago, I was hospitalized after …
The media had a field day recently with the proposal from Ontario’s Healthy Kids Panel to ban marketing of junk food to kids under 12. Sadly, this covereage missed a number of the panel’s crucial recommendations that would address the biggest contributors to childhood obesity. Childhood obesity rates are increasing across Canada. Over a quarter if children and …
Over the last decade, most Canadian provinces have shortened wait times for many surgical procedures, including hip and knee replacement. However, while provinces have poured resources into improving access, they have paid relatively little attention to measuring outcomes of these surgeries. The result, experts believe, is that some patients may be undergoing surgery when it is not …
When a patient dies in the hospital, we go through a checklist that has become eerily mundane: Examine the patient to confirm the death. Notify the family, the senior doctor, the local organ bank, the admitting office, and (in some cases) the medical examiner. Fill out the report of death. Write a death note. Brace …
The Personal Health Navigator is available to all Canadian patients. Questions about your doctor, hospital or how to navigate the health care system can be sent to AskLisa@Sunnybrook.ca The Question: Does OHIP cover all of the costs associated with valve replacement surgery? The Answer: The short answer is yes, the Ontario Health Insurance Plan does cover the cost …
Canada’s prisons have become the “asylums of the 21st century”. Yet despite evidence from the Mental Health Commission of Canada that the current criminal system is failing to address mental illness in our prisons, the Government of Canada continues to push a “tough on crime” agenda. According to a report from the federal prison ombudsman, …
Canadian research that shows how alcohol price policies can reduce alcohol-related harm is making waves in the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States—but not yet at home. International attention has far outstripped domestic attention for a surge of public health-related alcohol research coming out of the University of Victoria’s Centre for Addictions Research of …
If you’re an Ontarian, by now I’m sure you’ve heard a fair bit about Ontario’s release yesterday of the recommendations made by our Healthy Kids Panel. I’m not going to go into a point by point discussion and dissection. Overall the report’s solid. It makes 23 recommendations and as I was warned in an off-the-record chat …
The Personal Health Navigator is available to all Canadian patients. Questions about your doctor, hospital or how to navigate the health care system can be sent to AskLisa@Sunnybrook.ca The Question: My Godfather was diagnosed with neuroendocrine cancer a couple of weeks ago. He went into hospital with stomach pain and had emergency surgery for a tumor obstructing …
A urologist colleague of mine recently described the impact of long waiting times on his patient, named Linda (name has been changed). He had just completed a multi-hour surgical removal of a large, infected stone from Linda’s kidney. An operation, he pointed out, that he shouldn’t have had to do. Linda had been seen in an …