This morning the CCPA released a new report (co-authored by yours truly) that looks at the thorny issue of health care reform in BC and identifies some practical, evidence-based strategies that have been successful in improving quality of care and controlling costs in other jurisdictions. The paper comes out at a time when all Canadian [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Health care'
A prescription for health care reform: think integration & collaboration
January 16th, 2012 · Iglika Ivanova · 1 Comment · Health care, Provincial budget & finance, Transparency & accountability
Tags: BC·health care
Making health care funding sustainable
January 13th, 2012 · Seth Klein · Comments Off · Health care
The BC Legislature’s Select Standing Committee on Health is currently investigating the sustainability of BC’s health care system (with a focus on demographic / aging trends), and asked for written submissions of peer-reviewed studies on the subject. Here’s what I just submitted: Submission to the BC Legislature’s Select Standing Committee on Health From: Seth Klein, [...]
Tags: budget·health care costs
Social Determinants of Health
June 7th, 2011 · Peter Prontzos · Comments Off · Children & youth, Economy, Employment & labour, Health care, Housing & homelessness, Human rights, Poverty, inequality & welfare, Provincial budget & finance, Taxes, Women
It is now clear that economic, and social variables – more than individual behaviour – are the most salient factors in determining people’s well-being. Working and living conditions, the distribution of wealth, and where we live are some of , “the primary factors that shape the health of Canadians” (CCPA Monitor, June 2010). Almost everything [...]
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Environmental Violence
April 11th, 2011 · Peter Prontzos · 1 Comment · Climate change, Energy, Environment, resources & sustainability, Health care
Time magazine recently reported that particulates in the air from “industry, traffic and domestic heating, cause 4,300 premature deaths in London each year”. That works out to about 12 people dying every single day, in just one city. The British government does not seem worried about this horrific toll. To put their response in perspective, [...]
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Health Act Inquiry Into Threats Posed by Sour Gas A Step Closer?
March 30th, 2011 · Ben Parfitt · 4 Comments · Energy, Environment, resources & sustainability, Health care
A local citizens initiative aimed at highlighting the health threats posed by sour gas wells in B.C.’s energy-rich Peace River region appears to be gaining momentum, but whether or not it will result in a public inquiry remains to be seen. Last week, the Alaska Highway News reported that during her first installment of promised [...]
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A Paradigm Shift is Happening
November 21st, 2010 · Peter Prontzos · 2 Comments · Children & youth, Economy, First Nations & Aboriginal, Health care, Housing & homelessness, Human rights, Poverty, inequality & welfare, Women
A “paradigm shift” was the theme of Dr. Marti Glenn, one of the keynote speakers at the 2010 International Congress of The Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology & Health, which took place from November 11-14 at Asilomar, California. Dr. Glenn, who is the Dean of the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute, began by saying that, [...]
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Why incentive pay won’t fix education or health care
October 14th, 2010 · Iglika Ivanova · 4 Comments · Children & youth, Education, Health care, Privatization, P3s & public services
It turns out — surprise! — that it’s really hard to measure quality in complex social systems and that employing simplistic quantitative measures can backfire. That’s the take-home message from a recent talk by UC Berkley economist and public policy professor Jesse Rothstein who came to SFU to present his latest research on using standardized [...]
Tags: Education·evaluation·health care·incentive pay·patient-focused funding·standardized testing
The End of the H1N1 Pandemic
August 23rd, 2010 · Alan Cassels · 1 Comment · Health care
The world spent billions on medication and vaccine stockpiles because the World Health Organization cried wolf. If the WHO cannot cleanse its ties to the industrialists hungry for profits in exaggerating the severity of disease in order to sell treatments, why should we ever again listen to anything they say?
Tags: health care costs
Cholesterol drugs don’t help the healthy
August 12th, 2010 · Alan Cassels · 1 Comment · Health care
I have said this before and this recent research begs me to say this again: Someday we will look back on society’s zeal for checking and chemically altering our blood cholesterol in the same way we now regard blood letting and purging: A medical barbarity that good science cannot support.
Tags: health care costs
The U.K. having problems with its P3s
July 27th, 2010 · Keith Reynolds · 2 Comments · Education, Health care, Privatization, P3s & public services
Britain, which led the charge for public private partnerships under both Conservative and Labour governments over the past decades, is now seeing problems with the projects. This month the new coalition government cancelled the controversial Building Schools for the Future program. Michael Gove, the Conservative Secretary of State for Education said the P3 school program [...]
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