Ontario’s budget debate may be high profile, but it misses two essential points. With the NDP signaling NO TAX INCREASES (on the middle class) a serious discussion about taxes, particularly…
I wrote the following post as an op-ed in the Edmonton Journal, October30, 2013. I hope it plays a part in halting the privatization of Edmonton’s medical laboratories. The Alberta…
The provincial government’s mid-summer announcement that regulations under the Independent Health Facilities (IHF) Act will be drafted to permit “specialty clinics” raises some serious concerns. Changes in the LHINS enabling…
Every day there are stories of how the fragmentation of health care hurts patients. A few, when a patient dies, make the media. Most often fragmentation causes small inconveniences, but…
This year Independent Health Facilities (IHFs) in Ontario will start paying an annual administrative fee to cover the costs of their quality control program plus a new fee for the…
Andrew Duffy, in an article syndicated by Postmedia, made the logical equivalent of mixing metaphors when he used the Canada Health Act (CHA) to legitimize the use of private clinics.…
A new study by the Health Care Compliance Association (HCCA) in the United States found that non-profit health care institutions are audited by Medicare more often than their for-profit counterparts:…
One of Ontario’s little known private secrets is that most methadone, a staple of opiate addiction treatment, is primarily provided by for-profit clinics. Last week a doctor who works in…
It seems that the government is now using changes in the OHIP fee schedule give more work to the for-profit laboratory corporations. This reduction in patient access is documented by…
Who said these words and when? We have three broad objectives: to develop a more community-based health care system to ensure that patients receive quality medical care as close to…
The American Medical News reports that Fitch, a global investment rating service, found that incentives paid to hospitals for adoption of electronic health records (EHR) went to increased profits. Fitch…
I was surprised when the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) asked me to write an analysis piece on Canada’s medical laboratories. My book, False Positive, clearly lays out my position…
The categories we use to make sense of the world structure how we act. In his April 17th column Andre Picard, the health reporter for Toronto’s Globe and Mail newspaper,…
I am sure there is a plan to improve health care. There must be: Ontario’s recent budget says it wants to improve integration, control costs and increase access. Yet Ontario’s…
Considering the 1,500 dollars a day Don Drummond was paid and the research staff at his disposal you would figure that his analysis would be more subtle and better informed.…
