hospitals

What is driving health care costs?

Health Care Cost Drivers

A recent report by the Canadian Institute for Health Information provides information about the major drivers of health care costs in the past decade, which include growing salaries for health care workers and greater intensity of treatment.  The report suggests that the aging population is not a major contributor to rising health care costs. These findings clash

Hospital accreditation and quality improvement

Hospital accreditation is a process that assesses a hospital’s performance against a set of standards. This process is done differently across provinces and countries. In Canada, most hospitals go through an accreditation process conducted by Accreditation Canada. The accreditation process could be more transparent and provide more information to the public about the quality of

Why does the government appoint hospital supervisors?

In August 2011, a supervisor was appointed at the Niagara Health System to “restore public confidence” in the hospital.  The Ontario Public Hospitals Act  allows the government to appoint a supervisor to take over the administration of a hospital if it is considered in the public interest to do so.  While appointing a supervisor happens

Debate on paying doctors

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,