The 2024 Year in Review
With 2024 almost behind us, Michael Hainsworth shares some of the CDHI podcast’s most fascinating interviews and policy conversations during the course of a tumultuous year. Featuring: Wilbur Ross, Conrad Black, Martha Hall Findlay, John Baird, John Manley, Jason Kenney, John Tory, Mitzie Hunter, Rosalie Wyonch, Jane Philpott, Michelle Alexopoulos, Jeremy Kronick, Heather Evans, A.J. […] The Healthcare Solutions Canada Needs Now
If our current annual growth rate of family physicians continues, it will take 10 years to fill the access gap. How can we fix this? The C.D. Howe Institute is bringing policy solutions to the table.
Graph of the Week: How Demographics Drive Public Health Spending Trends
Over the past 10 years, provincial and territorial healthcare spending has increased across all age groups. Drilling deeper, in 2022, people over 75 years of age accounted for 29 percent of public health spending – a figure that hasn’t changed since 2012 despite a higher share of the population and increases in per capita spending. […] John Richards and Tingting Zhang – The Nurse Practitioner Answer to the Primary Care Crisis
From: John Richards and Tingting Zhang To: Healthcare observers Date: October 21, 2024 Re: The Nurse Practitioner Answer to the Primary Care Crisis The crisis in Canada’s primary care is reaching a breaking point. A staggering 6.5 million Canadians are without a family doctor or nurse-practitioner (NP). A recent C.D. Howe Institute report by one […] John Richards and Tingting Zhang – Let Nurse-Practitioners Practice More
Published in the Financial Post.
The crisis in Canada’s primary care is reaching a breaking point. A staggering 6.5 million Canadians are without a family doctor or nurse-practitioner (NP). A recent C.D. Howe report by one of us (Zhang) calculates we would need at least 7,844 more family physicians to meet current demand — an increase that could take up to a decade to achieve. With the population both growing and aging, waiting that long simply isn’t an option. It’s time to explore alternative solutions. More NPs should be one of them.
The International Council of Nurses defines nurse-practitioners as integrating “clinical skills associated with nursing and medicine in order to assess, diagnose and manage patients”…
Rosalie Wyonch on TVO – What’s the Cost of Ontario’s Nursing Shortage?
Nursing is a critical part of our healthcare system, but retaining and attracting nurses to the profession is becoming a huge burden. C.D. Howe Institute Senior Policy Analyst Rosalie Wyonch joined a panel discussion on TVO’s The Agenda to discuss Ontario’s nursing shortage and what it is costing the province.
Chris Bonnett – Ignore the Siren Call of Making Pharmacare Single-Payer
From: Chris BonnettTo: Pharmacare WatchersDate: October 9, 2024Re: Ignore the Siren Call of Making Pharmacare Single-Payer As Bill C-64 moves through Parliament, there are voices calling for amendments to ensure the fledgling pharmacare program adheres to the recommendation from the National Advisory Council on the Implementation of Pharmacare that it be a publicly funded single-payer […] Addressing the Crisis in Access to Primary Care: A Targeted Approach
In the latest OECD national satisfaction survey on “availability of quality health care,” Canadians gave our healthcare system a mark well below the OECD average. In a large 2022 Angus Reid survey of access to health care, 60 percent responded that they face “chronic difficulty” or “some challenges.” No single explanation of dysfunction – the […] Mahboubi, Robson – Time is running out to deal with the costs of aging on our economy
Published in The Globe and Mail.
Canada is facing a demographic shift that will put immense strain on our health care system and public finances.
We currently have about three working-age (18-64) adults for every senior (65+). By 2067, we will have only two working-age adults per senior. This shift will slow growth in the economy and government revenues while pushing health care expenses up.
The resulting fiscal pressure will be felt across the country, but will be much more intense in some provinces and territories than in others. For example, Newfoundland and Labrador, where the population is aging rapidly and the working-age population is falling, will face especially daunting challenges. Our projections…
Rosalie Wyonch – Addressing Canada’s Bed-Blocker Problem
To: Healthcare Observers From: Rosalie Wyonch Date: July 31, 2024 Re: Addressing Canada’s Bed-Blocker Problem Canadian hospitals are capacity-constrained and expensive and therefore not the best care setting for patients who no longer need acute care and the bed that comes with it. Yet these “alternate level care” (ALC) patients accounted for 17 percent of all acute-care bed days […] Graph of the Week: The Top 10 Diagnoses Hospitalization Rate
Introducing Graph of the Week, a new series from the C.D. Howe Institute’s Graphic Intelligence that presents valuable and easily digestible data. Each Monday we will unveil one new captivating chart or graph with interesting insights, explaining it in two-to-three sentences. Dive into the data with us. Compared to pre-pandemic, current hospitalization rates for the […] Rosalie Wyonch – Eliminate hallway medicine by getting non-acute patients out of hospital
Published in the Financial Post.
Canadian hospitals are capacity-constrained and expensive and therefore not the best care setting for patients who no longer need acute care and the bed that comes with it. Yet these “alternate level care” (ALC) patients accounted for 17 per cent of all acute-care bed days in Canada (excluding Quebec) in 2022-23. Reducing this unnecessary use of limited acute-care capacity could help ensure hospital beds are open for Canadians when they need them.
High ALC volume is one of the most vexing and complex health system challenges, but there are ways to address it. Relatively modest improvement could help reduce the risk of hospital bed shortages. ALC occupancy, which ranges from 14.5 to 26.1…