There are many points of convergence among experts on how best to transform our health care system. Introducing new efficiencies, expanding the use of technology, creating more chronic care facilities and providing better incentives for quality are just a few of the ways to introduce change.
However, to shape and bolster an endeavour as large, complex and crucial as health care transformation, we recommend as a first step that there be agreement on principles for guiding change.
Principles have worked before. The medicare principles of universality, portability, accessibility, comprehensiveness and public administration, as set out in the Canada Health Act, have served Canadians well for close to 30 years.
The act applies, however, only to physician and hospital services, which once comprised the bulk of health care spending. Meanwhile, health care has changed: new advances in surgery and pharmaceuticals mean less time spent in hospitals and doctors’ offices as patients are able to be treated at home or in their communities. An aging population requires a new paradigm with a greater focus on long-term, chronic care.
Earlier this year, Canada’s nurses and doctors, through their national associations, developed a new set of principles that would apply across the entire continuum of health care services.
With polls telling us that an overwhelming majority of Canadians believe national standards are important, these principles would serve as a common framework to ensure that we have in our country a health care system, bound together by pan-Canadian standards and a shared commitment to accountability and quality.
The principles we suggest are: Patient-centred; Quality; Health promotion and illness prevention; Equitable; Sustainable; and Accountable. And they’re backed not just by doctors and nurses, but also by more than 60 medical and health care organizations representing thousands more health care providers and patients.
Our health care system can be made better if we take a “principled” approach. To find out more about these principles, our ideas for transforming health care and what we’ve heard from Canadians, please go to healthcaretransformation.ca.
