By: Bob Gardner An article in a Globe and Mail series on innovation in health care delivery highlighted the potential of home visits from family physicians to helping people live independently in their own homes. This can both reduce overall system costs through avoiding or delaying institutionalization and significantly improve the quality of people’s lives.
But let’s think a little bigger. Read the rest of this entry »
By: Bob Gardner I’ve been working on pulling together various tools and resources to help policy makers and planners put health equity into practice — stay tuned here. One lever several LHINs have used is to have their partner hospitals do health equity plans. I looked again at this really useful analysis led by Sanjeev Sridharan of the hospital plans done within Toronto Central LHIN. This process proved very successful at mobilizing discussion and coordination within their organizations, and sharing experience across the system. The hospitals are now developing their second generation plans.
By: admin Canada’s health care system is based on the principles of comprehensiveness, universality, portability, public administration and accessibility. But, many people are excluded from access to the healthcare they need because they are not eligible for provincial health insurance. Every year, thousands of people come to Canada, in particular to Ontario, Canada’s economic hub. Read the rest of this entry »
By: Bob Gardner UBC health economist Bob Evans famously called arguments that Medicare is unsustainable or that we therefore need privatization zombies: meaning that these ideas are constantly refuted by all the evidence, yet they keep being raised again and again. Of course, that is because there are powerful interests driving these ideas. Economist Hugh Mackenzie and health policy consultant Dr Michael Rachlis have done an excellent analysis of how Medicare and a universal health system is sustainable and how the real answers to the pressures facing the system are better policy and management. They highlight that this debate is essentially political; that the fiscal pressures on health and other sectors come from government decisions to cut taxes and services, as opposed to inherent trends within the health system. They point the way forward: improved planning and management of care will control costs; service and organizational reforms can drive better quality care; enhanced primary care, health promotion and prevention can keep people well; and seeing all this as part of a comprehensive and integrated Second Stage of Medicare will underlie a vision of good health and well-being for all.
By: Bob Gardner Evidence from around the world shows that enhancing access to high quality comprehensive primary care for disadvantaged people and communities is one of them most important directions for addressing health inequalities. Community health centres are a vital part of this direction in Canada and many other countries, and the recent AOHC conference on Health Equity: Pushing the Boundaries highlighted how to drive this into action on the ground (I spoke on how do this). Read the rest of this entry »
