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 …
How do we get more doctors to practice in rural communities? This has been a long standing challenge in Canada — getting physicians to work where we need them — especially in provinces with large rural populations. Policy makers have created and implemented some promising solutions, but until recently, there has been little evidence on …
The United States began releasing the Medicare payments it made to individual doctors on April 9, a move that sparked sensational headlines and debates about privacy. The data offer insights into the $77 billion paid by Medicare’s fee-for-service program to more than 880,000 health care professionals in 2012. Should Canadian provinces follow the U.S.’s lead and publicly …
Family medicine was a popular choice among medical graduates in the 1980s, when Roger Strasser was training at The University of Western Ontario. “The residents had almost a missionary zeal that they were going to be family doctors,” he says. He shared their passion, becoming a family physician. But when he returned to Canada in 2002, after going back …
If you or one of your family members come down with an illness (such as pneumonia) and require hospitalization, you are likely to encounter two issues. First, you will more likely than not be looked after by a “hospitalist”, and second you will likely notice a need for more efficiency as a result of significant …
Physician Assistants are “handmaids” to doctors. PAs were “created by physicians” who were frustrated that nurses no longer tolerate being ordered around by MDs. And that’s just a taste of the negative reaction from some nurses to a recent Healthy Debate article on integration of physician assistants in Canada. I found it disheartening, but not …
Months before my life was upended, a doctor friend tried to explain my forthcoming role in terms I’d understand. “Imagine being on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” he said. “You’re in charge of a single patient, but she is needy as hell.” Medical training prepared me for motherhood in some ways …
After several decades working in the Canadian military, Physician Assistants (PAs) are being introduced into provincial health care systems. This year, Alberta launched a two-year demonstration project to integrate PAs into selected clinical practices. About a decade ago ago, PAs were introduced in Manitoba and Ontario. In Ontario, PAs were part of Ontario’s broader health human resources …
This is the second of a two-part series on Alberta’s health care restructuring. This article examines the impact of constant change at the highest levels of administration on those who work within the health care system. Alberta Health Services (AHS) is the largest health care delivery organization in Canada. AHS provides health care to nearly …
As part of the 2003 Health Accord, the Federal Government made major investments in interprofessional education. This included contributing $28 million dollars to build training centres across Canadian colleges and universities. Investing in interprofessional education was motivated by the belief that changing the way health care professionals work together would be a key part of …
Much of the focus on the health care needs of Canada’s aging population surrounds the shortage of physicians with expertise in care of older adults. But the country’s 75,000 licensed physicians represent only a small part of the Canadian health care workforce. By contrast, there are approximately 360,000 regulated nurses, 35,000 social workers, 30,000 pharmacists, …
Our health care system faces a disturbing paradox. While seniors represent the fastest growing age group in Canada, the country faces a growing deficiency of specialist physicians with expertise in caring for the elderly. But with seniors accounting for nearly half of all the country’s hospitalizations and visiting their family physician twice as often as younger …
After finishing medical school, new doctors go through several years of post-graduate, on-the-job training – known as residency – in order to become licensed to practice independently. Historically, residency has involved very long hours spent in hospital, so that residents see a high volume of diverse cases as well as provide patient care. As part …
Residents are an essential part of Canada’s 24/7 health system. They are in a unique position, serving as both care givers and physicians-in-training, and they have traditionally worked very long hours. This has led to tremendous national and international debate regarding the regulation of resident work hours. The European Union now limits residents to 52.5 …
A growing number of Canadian doctors are underemployed after finishing their training. There are a number of likely causes, including a lack of infrastructure funding, delayed retirements, and a lack of health human resource planning at the national level. After about two decades of strongly worded public headlines and numerous government reports about doctor shortages, …
In Ontario, specialists are concentrated in larger cities, and Ontarians living in smaller cities and rural regions have challenges accessing specialist services. In Ontario, Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs) use non-financial incentives to try to attract specialists to practice in hospitals that serve rural areas, and provide telemedicine and outreach clinics for patients. In contrast, …
Tomorrow, final year medical students across the country (including myself) will login to the CaRMs website and learn our fates for the next 2-5 years. The ways in which residency positions are assigned were well discussed by healthydebate. The factors that contribute to medical student choice of discipline and location are widely varied and include …