The federal government recently announced the Chief Public Health Officer – the physician at the head of the Public Health Agency of Canada – should no longer set the agency’s own budget, leaving this task to a soon-to-be appointed administrator. While the risks and benefits of this approach continue to be debated, a widely cited …
What you need to know about the federal government’s reversal of the refugee health cuts After significant public opposition and efforts from the health sector, the federal government has finally backtracked on many of their cuts to the refugee health program brought about in 2012. The drastic changes to the Interim Federal Health program cut off …
I’m sure Nero did not actually fiddle while Rome burned, but it makes a nice metaphor for the less-desirable qualities and actions of leaders and communicators during emergencies and crises. In the global/international response to the Ebola virus as it smoldered and then raged in West Africa beginning in the spring of 2014, and the …
Ontario registered nurses have a limited right to refuse unsafe work under the province’s Occupational Health and Safety Act. Still, the question remains: will nurses refuse to care for Ebola patients should we ever be faced with that scenario? As President of the Ontario Nurses’ Association (ONA), the largest nurses’ union in Canada, I can …
The evidence to support much of children’s healthcare is limited.Ten years ago, randomized controlled trials in adults were increasing ten times faster than pediatric ones. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like the trend has changed and the gap in evidence between adult and children’s healthcare continues to widen. Randomized controlled trials are the best ‘fair tests’ we …
Every decade or so, a new or exotic infectious disease boards a flight and lands at a Western hospital, and suddenly ethical questions of risks to health care workers and “duty to treat” are front and centre. In the 1980’s and 90’s it was HIV/AIDS. In 2003 it was SARS. Today it’s Ebola. There is no question the …
In 2012, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) lifted the experimental designation on human egg freezing. At this time, it was careful to indicate that freezing technology should not to be used for elective purposes, particularly as this might give young women false hope. A 2014 fact sheet prepared by the ASRM confirms that “Even in …
As dedicated patient experts we welcome Ontario Premier Wynne’s Mandate Letter to Health Minister Eric Hoskins. We are encouraged that in an interview with the Globe and Mail Minister Hoskins committed himself to “improving the patient experience” and the Mandate letter leads with a priority to “Putting Patients at the Centre”. In our many patient roles, …
Friday, October 3, 2014: A CBC headline read, “Could Ebola vaccine delay be due to an intellectual property spat?” By the next morning a colleague, Richard Gold of McGill, and I had figured out that the “IP” (intellectual property) was in fact a non-story. Whatever was delaying the start of a research trial to test …
Ontario’s decision to move more hospital-based services to the community is a sensible and laudable policy that has to be backed up with appropriate safety and quality regulation, as well as reimbursement practices. In the last couple of years, in the face of clear, published evidence of quality problems in at least some private clinics …
The highest profile direct-to-consumer genetic testing company in the world, 23andMe, has opened shop in Canada. In addition to providing information about your genetic ancestry (turns out I am 100% Irish), 23andMe will, after your genetic information is pulled from the required tube of spit, provide you with a whole bunch of genetic risk information …
A dispute between some researchers and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR – Canada’s largest health research granting agency) about how many large clinical trials should be funded by the CIHR has recently gone public. The scientists believe that more large clinical trials should be funded in Canada, and they should decide which ones. …
Clinical knowledge has now become easier to obtain than ever. Open-access medical journals that waive subscription fees for readers, electronic medical record systems such as My e-Health in British Columbia that allow patients access to their own lab results, and full subscription to point-of-care tools such as UpToDate by patients have flattened the information hierarchy …
If you regularly peruse the pages of Healthy Debate, you’re in the bubble; one could call you an ‘insider’. If you’ve heard of the Canadian Institute of Health Information or Health Quality Ontario, or if you scan the news for columns by André Picard, Kelly Grant or Tom Blackwell, then you are an insider. Do you ever tune into White Coat Black Art, …
Society is in denial about death, especially in the context of medical care. People visit their doctors for cures. Few expect to be told there is no fix, let alone that their illness will lead to their deaths. Medical education reflects that same social discourse. Though I frequently provide care to dying patients, my medical education was …
A recent article in Healthy Debate highlighted the possibility of uncovering incidental findings as a significant challenge in genomic sequencing. An incidental finding is a genetic condition that causes a disease unrelated to the reason genetic testing was initially ordered. For example, imagine you have been recently diagnosed with a serious disease, such as colon …
When federal Health Minister Rona Ambrose announced proposed changes to nutrition labels this summer, dietitians and the public were excited. With the current labels, shoppers looking for healthier products needed to be either a biology expert or a math whiz to succeed. But will the new ones solve the problem? Here are five of the proposed …
Through our work looking at the negative public health impacts of coal on Albertans’ health, we often run into skeptics. “Show me the grave of someone who died from coal!” they demand. This is difficult, given the nature of coal’s effect on our health: the science of public health looks at things at a population, …
Canada spends a significant proportion of its budget on health care, while achieving average population health outcomes compared with other OECD countries. It is difficult to achieve coordinated and comprehensive care, due in part to the strain of a dependence on acute care services, accounting for nearly 30% of total health care costs. An aging …
As a primary care physician, I support using data for quality improvement and research. But when I recently helped a family medicine resident complete a research project, flaws in our current system became evident. Her chart review was focused on women in prenatal care who had no health insurance at my workplace, the Somerset West Community Health …