Maintaining Quality of Care
The message from Canadians has been loud and clear: maintaining
high quality, universal health care is their first priority. For
more than a year, Roy Romanow traveled across the country for his
marathon Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada. Ontarians
and Canadians packed meetings to have their say, and the final report
released in November 2002 captured the consensus that emerged from
that extensive consultation. His report articulated a common comprehensive
vision for re-building our health-care system, and for putting it
on a sound, sustainable footing. The report reflected Canadians’
firm commitment to universal access to health care as a basic human
right. Now is the time to fully address all of the requirements
for political and economic sustainability of medicare: access, affordability
and accountability.
Protecting and Improving Access
Ontarians want universal access to timely, quality health care.
Medicare must cover all necessary health services. This includes
public health, primary health care, hospital care, home care, rehabilitation,
long-term care, palliative care and pharmacare. While questions
of cost may preclude an immediate move to full coverage of all services,
the province can certainly progress in bold stages. RNAO fully endorses
Commissioner Romanow’s recommendation to start by expanding
coverage to primary health care, specific home care (post acute,
palliative and mental health), diagnostics, and catastrophic pharmacare.
This expansion of coverage will enhance current access and will
resolve some of the irrationality of a system that overuses covered
services while under-using uninsured services. The proposed expansion
will also encourage a stronger wellness approach.
Investing in public health care
Investment in community health centres (CHCs) and other not-for-profit
interdisciplinary models, which engage their communities, represent
an ideal opportunity for the Ontario government to enhance access
to primary health care.
Funding not-for-profit delivery
RNAO urges the Ontario government to provide operational funds
to run diagnostic services (e.g., MRIs and CT Scans) 24x7 as has
been done for the past two decades in Europe. Additional diagnostic
equipment should be purchased as needed, and allocated to hospitals
across the province, to be utilized only for medically necessary
care. RNAO urges the government to uphold its commitment to not-for-profit
ownership, control and delivery of new diagnostic equipment.
The ban on for-profit ownership and delivery is essential to facilitate
equal access by all Ontarians.
One additional step will improve access to all services: the introduction
of multi-year funding. Without it, we are seeing that providers
are reluctant to commit to essential investments in physical plant
or employment. This has been one of the causes of unstable employment
of nurses, which is a grave threat to the profession and patient
safety. The government implemented multi-year funding for hospitals.
It should implement multi-year funding for across all sectors as
stable, predictable funding is essential for effective planning
throughout the system. When nurses see that the system does not
value them enough to give them secure employment, many choose to
go elsewhere.
We cannot afford to lose this precious human resource.
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Adapted from Ontarians
Chose Change: A Time to Act Submission to Standing Committee on
Finance and Economic Affairs. Referencing
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