The declining Health Care System.

"With regards to international comparison, the 2014 Commonwealth Fund report on the health system performance of 11 countries ranked Canada 10th overall, indicated particularly low scores in quality, safety, access, timeliness, efficiency and equity.17 "

17

Commonwealth Fund, Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: How the Performance of the US Health Care System Compares

Internationally, 2014 Update

 What an indictment!.
                  And now look at what the Administridiots are embarking on to 'fix'  things.    The Baker Price Report.   Let's deal with that later.   First, I want to deal with the appalling dictatorial arrogance of  the Ontario Government.
            If the citizens of Ontario think they have it bad now, just wait.  Further, if the  physicians of Ontario think they have it bad now, just wait.  Unless, of course, they drop their feckless stance and stand up for their profession.  I used to think the government objective was to convert physicians into civil servants.  Right now, their status is way below that of civil servants.  Physicians have none of the benefits of civil servants and no recourse to the corrective action that they enjoy.  In fact, if the administration tried to pull the unilateral reduction of pay stunt, without binding arbitration on civil servants the government would be shut down.  
           There is only one way to deal with such a bureaucracy.    If they won't negotiate with us, we can't negotiate with them.  There is no such thing as unilateral negotiation.  However, being the humanists that most physicians are, they know we will never deny patients needed care and rely on that factor to do  what they like.   Despite the lack of  support from the Royal College, which seems to have become a Ministry of Health satrap, there are steps that physicians can take that will not hurt patient care.  Of course any such  steps will require considerable fortitude, which I figure has become increasingly rare in recent years.  Unfortunately, the alternate is to tug your forelock, bow your head, do as you are ordered and stop complaining.  I will describe some of the measures that physicians could take in a separate blog.
           Now the Ministry of Health is introducing "A new model of  population based primary health care."   The objectives are four fold.
1. To ensure that all citizens have a regular primary care provider.  (We used to call them general practitioners.)
2. To make sure patients who need related care can obtain it.
3. To improve integration between GPs and other parts of the system.
4. To provide adequate care after-hours and on week-ends.
            All things that physicians have been doing with greater or lesser degrees of success as long as I've been in  medicine (and that's long!)   It's the same old cheese and in a subsequent blog I will explain to you how they are planning to do it.