Primary Cure

There is a solution for the trickiest challenges in Canadian health care

The Canadian Medical Association recently released the results of their conversation on private-public health care in Canada, including a draft policy. This process, with town halls that pitted private vs. public on even footing, faced criticism. The design of the debates appeared to present for-profit care as a viable option despite a large body of evidence showing that publicly-funded care leads to better outcomes. This post from a year ago explored the controversy and concern around the CMA process in more detail:

Skipping to the end of that piece, I wrote that, “I’m hopeful that the message from these town halls will be, just as it was with the Romanow Commission, that all Canadians - docs included - value the principles of Medicare and are ready to do the work to fulfill that promise.” Happily, that turned out to be the case. the policy makes clear recommendations against user fees and duplicate insurance for medically necessary care. They also made thoughtful recommendations governing for-profit clinics contracted for the provision of publicly-funded services and the role of private equity in health care facility ownership. As well as these “don’t”s there are a number of important “do’s,” including direction on sharing information across jurisdictions, shortening waitlists, and a clear statement in support of Pharmacare.

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Recommendation #1 of the report had the most helpful intervention: Governments scale up collaborative, interprofessional, publicly funded primary care teams so that more Canadians can access timely and integrated care provided by family doctors together with other primary care practitioners. The CMA calls on governments to establish primary care teams for 50% of Canadians within five years, and 80% within 10 years.

This lines up almost exactly with what Dr. Jane Philpott has been proposing in her new book Health For All. Establishing a national Primary Health Care plan that ensured every Canadian was connected to a clinic is achievable. It would have a major impact on improving health outcomes and reducing the pressures on our struggling health care system. It’s encouraging to see this idea gaining steam and I can only hope that the federal government will see that the wisdom of this goes beyond partisan stripes.

“Simply put, we must make it a reality that every person living in Canada has a primary care home, just as every Canadian child has access to a public school.” Jane Philpott

I discussed this idea and shared an excerpt from Jane’s book in this post in April:

Trust Issues (Part I)

And shared video of my book launch with Dr. Philpott at Queen’s last fall where she hosted me for a conversation on A Healthy Future.

Dog-eared and Determined

With Dr. Jane Philpott at Queen’s University

I’m excited to invite you to continue that conversation. This Friday (August 9, 2024) I’ll be interviewing Dr. Philpott at McNally Robinson in Saskatoon. And on Saturday, Jane and I will be at the Manitou Beach Literary Festival in Watrous for an afternoon panel discussion on both of our books. We’ll be digging deeper into solutions for what ails health care in Canada and would love to see you out at either event!

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And just for fun, a photo taken at a recent conference on tackling TB in Saskatchewan. I was inspired to hear Dr. Tam talk of her belief that we can eliminate endemic tuberculosis in Canada and of work on a new national strategy that will help us reach that goal.

But the best part was that the photographer told me he was very moved by the book (see credit in caption).

With Dr. Theresa Tam and PHAC President Heather Jeffrey. Photo credit Dr. Saqib Shahab.

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