Funding

Practice streams: Efficiency or a trap?

The news from the recently released Canadian Institute for Health Information report on emergency department (ED) congestion is not new. Nor is the news from the survey by the Ontario Medical Association on ED congestion.

We need local solutions to ease hospital overcrowding

Over the past dozen years, every health system in the Western world has moved from struggling with capacity issues to becoming nearly overwhelmed. This is no less true for Canada – and our shifting demographics to a more aged population will exacerbate the capacity issue.

Alberta scapegoating temporary residents in its referendum

We are clinicians and health system researchers. Through both our clinical and academic work, we bear witness to a health system that is under great pressure, with more sick patients and fewer hospital beds and resources to meet their needs.

How to spend money and make emergency overcrowding worse

Canada's emergency departments (EDs) had no summer reprieve. In July, Global News reported that Montreal EDs were operating above 200 per cent capacity. In British Columbia, CityNews reported eight overnight interruptions at Mission Memorial's ED in two weeks because of physician shortages. By August, 100 Mile House had recorded its 36th ED closure of 2026, with patients directed to a hospital 95 kilometers away.

Low-income seniors losing out on government pensions

Many low-income seniors are standing on the edge of a financial precipice. As family physicians and health promoters at St. Michael’s Family Health Team, we do everything we can to support our patients through these challenges. But for every person we help, thousands of others fall through the cracks with no one to catch them.

LifeLabs strike highlights risks of foreign ownership in Canadian health care

The months-long strike at British Columbia’s LifeLabs has raised questions about foreign ownership of medical services and Canadians’ health data.

Medical libraries are essential. So why are we imposing cuts on them?

Health-care providers should be spending their time treating patients, not hunting for resources. Medical libraries and their staff are essential for supporting their work.

Governments should pay the high price of gene therapy

For the first time in history, Health Canada has approved a gene therapy treatment for people with Hemophilia B. But gene therapy is not cheap. Canada needs to step in and help fund these treatments.

Financial side-effects of treatment can be devastating in our ‘free’ health-care system

Health-care providers must also begin to take proactive steps to ensure that patients are not only aware of the medical side effects of their care and treatments, but the financial side effects, too.

Nurses know the ‘Your Health Act’ is anything but good for your health

Bill 60 has alarmed and horrified Ontario nurses and other health-care providers. Allowing private companies to profit from people’s health-care needs will not solve the staffing crisis, it will make it worse.

What will happen to Ontario’s uninsured? Experts weigh in

Adding to the list of lifted pandemic policies, Ontario will no longer cover the cost hospital services and physicians fees for the previously uninsured. Without OHIP for these groups, what can we expect to see? Is this the right move? Experts weigh in.

Ontario taxpayers bearing the burden of ‘OHIP for all’ policy

Ten days into the COVID-19 pandemic, Ontario's public health insurance policy was expanded to include all uninsured patients, like temporary workers and tourists. But more sustainable solutions are needed in place of “OHIP for All.”

The essential role of spiritual care in long-term care

In 2020, Ontario's LTC lockdown policies led to the elimination of religious, recreational, therapeutic and social activities for residents, resulting in a spiritual health crisis in LTC homes. As a front-line occupational therapist, I witnessed first-hand the devastating consequences of the removal of spiritual care.

Shortage of physicians, support systems puts health care in northern Ontario in jeopardy

The holistic style of community care that is the backbone of health care in rural northern Ontario is in jeopardy. If we care about equity, those in northern Ontario must have equitable access to the opportunity to live and die well in their communities.

Pandemic exposes need to overhaul funding of hospice care

Yes, this is the right time to “call out” elected officials and demand progressive policy

“Mission-Pivot:” The not-so-gradual shift to essential COVID-19 research at Canadian universities

Our hospitals and prisons are failing because we’re using them to house people instead of to help them

Ontario’s poverty reduction strategy is built on the idea that people deserve to be poor

Lung cancer is no longer a death sentence. Why aren’t we saving more lives?