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The government has been warned for decades about the need to co-ordinate and support home care to accommodate: The fast-growing number of Ontarians with Alzheimer's and related dementia. There were 181,000 of them in 2011, and that number is expected to grow by 40 per cent before 2021. The 13,042 people currently on wait-lists for home-care services. (This does not include those cut from the lists because Community Care Access Centres had to tighten eligibility due to a lack of funding.) The increasing need for home care to help seniors retain their independence. But instead of properly supporting and funding home care - to save money, never mind provide compassionate care - the current $2.4-billion budget for home care provides less per patient than in 2002/03, according to the health coalition's calculations. This year, the Ontario government topped up the entire $4.9-billion budget for both home and community care (which includes community health centres) by $270 million and plans to increase that gradually to $750 million over the next couple of years. Still, the Ontario Health Coalition is recommending:

Patient advocates or an ombudsman to help people access timely, sufficient home care. Increased funding to ensure those in need are cared for. More controversially, an end to the current mix of private and public health-care services. (It argues the home-care system should be a public, not-for-profit service.) Their report is a well-researched, well-thought-out eye-opener - backed up on many issues by the government-commissioned report. Health Minister Eric Hoskins should act on both immediately. The most vulnerable of patients - those waiting for help at home - depend on it.

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, released in 2014, outlined more clearly and with greater certainty than ever before how both climate change and pollution from the combustion of fossil fuels have killed thousands of people and will threaten the lives of many more.2

In 2010, a position statement from the Canadian Medical Association3 called for physicians to take action, but it focused largely on developing strategies to deal with the impending effects of climate change on health and health systems. In 2013, a CMAJ editorial4 discussed the role of physicians on the front line of climate change and examined how they can make a difference at the political, professional and individual levels. These recommendations remain pertinent.

Prompt action on reducing fossil fuel emissions in the near term, to prevent irredeemable downstream effects, is just as important as responding to current and imminent threats. An emergency medicine physician based in Yellowknife summed it up well when she likened the relatively small window for action to the urgency following a myocardial infarction or the onset of sepsis. “We either get the job done in the next decade or so or we prepare for palliative care.”5

Yet achieving international binding agreements seems to be happening at a slower pace than that of receding glaciers. When world leaders convene, issues related to saving the world from economic collapse, terrorist threats and oil crises seem to come before those related to saving the world from the threat of climate change. However, things are changing at the macro-economic level. The World Bank has made strides in coordinating international efforts to develop renewable energy, develop globally networked carbon markets and “enhance the flow of finance toward the ongoing effort to limit global warming.”6 One can perhaps see the influence of the current president of the World Bank, who is a physician and social anthropologist, in these recent actions.

Humans are bad at envisioning or appreciating the long-term consequences of behaviour. Behavioural scientists call the phenomenon “delayed reward discounting.” In short, we need salience now. In developed countries such as Canada, many of the adverse effects of climate change will only affect future generations. Although we may believe the science and many of us may support our government in making binding agreements to reduce carbon emissions, changing our personal behaviours may be costly, inconvenient and difficult. How do we galvanize to combat global warming?

Health promotion campaigns are most effective when delivered on multiple levels at once, combining information on the health benefits of a behaviour change with modelling of the behaviour, reduced barriers to its adoption, a good system of social support for those who adopt it, and person-to-person promotional initiatives and media campaigns.7

We need such a multipronged campaign to drive real action on climate change. Physicians are agents for change at all levels, and we can do more to bring climate change to the forefront of people’s consciousness. With our unique comprehension of stages of change and skill at intervening to help individuals make lifestyle changes at whichever stage they may find themselves, we can make a big impact.

We have managed to effect social change regarding smoking despite the power of industry, and we are beginning to turn the tide against the anti-vaccine lobby. Our approach to overcoming the stalling tactics of climate-change deniers should be no different. A few years ago, it was unusual to ask patients about how much physical activity they engaged in or how much sitting their job demanded. Now, we counsel about the risks of being underactive and write exercise prescriptions. It is time for physicians to talk about the effects of climate change routinely in daily practice. We should not forget that we are respected, influential advocates.

£7 an hour, receives an extra £1 an hour for a night shift and £2 an hour for weekends.

"The NHS encourages you to have these NVQs, all this training, improve your knowledge, and then they [private care companies] come along and it all comes to nothing.

Care UK expects to make a profit "of under 6%" by the end of the three-year contract

£700,000 operating profit in the six months between September last year and March this year,

In 1993 the private sector provided 5% of the state-funded services given to people in their homes, known as domiciliary care. By 2012 this had risen to 89% – largely driven by the local authorities' need for cheaper ways to deliver services and the private sector's assurance that they could provide the answer. More than £2.7bn is spent by the state on this type of care every year. Private providers have targeted wages as a way to slice out profits, de-skilling the sector in the process.

1.4 million care workers in England are unregulated by any professional body and less than 50% have completed a basic NVQ2 level qualification, with 30% apparently not even completing basic induction trainin

Today 8% of care homes are supplied by private equity-owned firms – and the number is growing. The same is true of 10% of services run for those with learning disabilities

William Laing

report on private equity in July 2012

"It makes pots of money.

Those profits – which are made before debt payments and overheads – don't appear on the bottom line of the health firms' company accounts, and because of that corporation tax isn't paid on them.

Some of that was in payments on loans issued in Guernsey, meaning tax could not be charged. Its sister company, Silver Sea, responsible for funding the construction of Care UK care homes, is domiciled in the tax haven of Luxembourg

Bridgepoint

.voterDiv .ob_bctrl{display:none;} .ob_pdesc IMG{border:none;} .AR_1 .ob_what{direction:ltr;text-align:right;clear:both;padding:5px 10px 0px;} .AR_1 .ob_what a{color:#999;font-size:10px;font-family:arial;text-decoration: none;} .AR_1 .ob_what.ob-hover:hover a{text-decoration: underline;} .AR_1 .ob_clear{clear:both;} .AR_1 .ob_amelia, .AR_1 .ob_logo, .AR_1 .ob_text_logo {display:inline-block;vertical-align:text-bottom;padding:0px 5px;box-sizing:content-box;-moz-box-sizing:content-box;-webkit-box-sizing:content-box;} .AR_1 .ob_amelia{background:url('http://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/ob_logo_16x16.png') no-repeat center top;width:16px;height:16px;margin-bottom:-2px;} .AR_1 .ob_logo{background:url('http://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/ob_logo_67x12.png') no-repeat center top;width:67px;height:12px;} .AR_1 .ob_text_logo{background:url('http://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/ob_text_logo_66x23.png') no-repeat center top;width:66px;height:23px;} .AR_1:hover .ob_amelia, .AR_1:hover .ob_logo, .AR_1:hover .ob_text_logo{background-position:center bottom;} .AR_1 .ob_org_header { border-top: 10px solid #D61D00; display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-top: 5px; } More from the guardian Rogeting: why 'sinister buttocks' are creeping into students' essays 08 Aug 2014 Theatre's decision to ban Jewish film festival is 'thin end of wedge' 09 Aug 2014 Sir Paul Nurse: 'I looked at my birth certificate. That was not my mother's name' 09 Aug 2014 Adventures in contraception: eight women discuss their choices 10 Aug 2014 Child prison deaths 08 Aug 2014 [?] .voterDiv .ob_bctrl{display:none;} .ob_pdesc IMG{border:none;} .AR_2 .ob_what{direction:ltr;text-align:right;clear:both;padding:5px 10px 0px;} .AR_2 .ob_what a{color:#999;font-size:10px;font-family:arial;text-decoration: none;} .AR_2 .ob_what.ob-hover:hover a{text-decoration: underline;} .AR_2 .ob_clear{clear:both;} .AR_2 .ob_amelia, .AR_2 .ob_logo, .AR_2 .ob_text_logo {display:inline-block;vertical-align:text-bottom;padding:0px 5px;box-sizing:content-box;-moz-box-sizing:content-box;-webkit-box-sizing:content-box;} .AR_2 .ob_amelia{background:url('http://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/ob_logo_16x16.png') no-repeat center top;width:16px;height:16px;margin-bottom:-2px;} .AR_2 .ob_logo{background:url('http://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/ob_logo_67x12.png') no-repeat center top;width:67px;height:12px;} .AR_2 .ob_text_logo{background:url('http://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/ob_text_logo_66x23.png') no-repeat center top;width:66px;height:23px;} .AR_2:hover .ob_amelia, .AR_2:hover .ob_logo, .AR_2:hover .ob_text_logo{background-position:center bottom;} .AR_2 .ob_org_header { border-top: 10px solid #D61D00; display: block; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-top: 5px; } /* updated via mysql on 2014-04-08 */ .AR_2 .ob_what { display: block; } /* added via mysql on 2014-06-20 */ .OUTBRAIN:hover .ob_what a { text-decoration: underline; } .ob_box_cont.AR_2 { padding-bottom: 5px; } /* end mysql add */ /* added via mysql on 2014-07-14 */ .AR_2 .ob_org_header span { color: #999; font-family: arial; font-size: 11px; font-weight: normal; display: block; } /* end 2014-07-14 */ More from around the webPromoted content by Outbrain http://paid.outbrain.com/network/redir?p=0iZOm4XuGW6R5uuT6ZFciNevzJlIfmxs0SRwpiMrH7gWrMXoPie4vIA9PlhaEW%2BXNi57pCgl9j8yOE3HuJT75pwCLNj4n18v3EKQDEV0YFQjOBxc46mOs

“It was done completely in secret,” says Pia Zambelli, a Montréal-based refugee lawyer. “We only found out about it by accident.” At issue, explains Zambelli, is the Cabinet order — known as Order in Council P.C. 157-11/848 of June 20, 1957 — that first committed Ottawa to begin financing the refugee health care program almost 60 years ago. In 2012, when the Cabinet slashed health care for failed refugee claimants as well as for claimants from countries Canada deems safe, it repealed the Order in Council that created it.

Massages have become a lifestyle rather than health choice. Some children under the age of 10 are getting them. Massage allowances are mostly used by girls and women. Women at all ages use benefits at a much higher rate than men, with one exception, which is 10 years old and under. In this age group, boys tend to need speech therapy more than girls. Mental-health claims for drugs and therapy that treat depression and anxiety are starting at ever- younger ages. David Willows, vice-president of strategic market solutions at Green Shield, said spas were once considered something for the wealthy. The rest of us might manage a massage once in a while as a special treat. Not so now.

Ross Cristiano, who heads the Toronto health and benefits team for HR consultant Towers Watson, agreed payments for soft benefits are rising, but these paramedical costs are about 10 per cent of all spending. He agreed that high-cost drugs, which account for 20 per cent of all spending, are getting pricier and there's going to be a reckoning. "If you look at high-cost drugs over the last four years, the cost of providing them has increased by about 60 per cent," he said. "Given that a lot more of these drugs are hitting the market, that's probably going to increase." Adam Mayers writes about investing and personal finance on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach him at amayers@thestar.ca.

Construction could start by 2017 with an opening set for 2022.

Providence CEO Dianne Doyle told Business in Vancouver after the announcement that the previous $850 million plan to upgrade the current hospital would have only been a partial upgrade and would have been much more difficult to finance.

The new hospital will also provide a higher quality of care given that almost all of its 700 beds will be single-room beds. About 80% of the  Burrard Street site’s 435 beds are currently in multi-bed rooms. More single-bed rooms also reduces the amount of patient movement necessary.

Critics of the move, such as Vancouver-West End MLA Spencer Chandra Herbert, tweeted about how the Stanley Cup riots in 2011 demonstrated why the dense downtown peninsula needs an emergency room.

While there is no plan for an emergency room at the Burrard Street site, Providence’s Neil McConnell, who is the project leader for the St. Paul’s Hospital redevelopment, told BIV that health care services may continue at the Burrard Street site.

In Sweden, the pharmacy sector was a government monopoly from 1971 to 2009. Consequently, it was among the countries with the lowest number of pharmacies by population, with barely one outlet per 10,000 inhabitants, about a third as many as in most Canadian provinces. State pharmacies offered very limited opening hours: from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday. Not a single pharmacy was open on Sunday, and many closed down completely for the summer. Sweden has since profoundly liberalized this sector and the number of pharmacies has skyrocketed as a result, increasing more in the following four years than in the previous 30. In addition to the hundreds that were privatized, 374 new private pharmacies entered the market, thereby improving access for the inhabitants of all regions. The effectiveness and accessibility of the health services provided by the private sector result primarily from the market mechanisms that govern them, namely entrepreneurship, competition and patients' freedom of choice. We should not be surprised to find that these mechanisms are largely absent in the public healthcare system. Yet it is these mechanisms that ensure that patients remain at the centre of care-providers' concerns. We should keep that in mind when thinking of how to reform our ailing public system. Yanick Labrie is an economist at the Montreal Economic Institute (Iedm.org) and author of The Other Health Care System: Four Areas Where the Private Sector Answers Patients' Needs.

Earlier in the week, the NDP revealed that the Liberals sold 14 parcels of land in Coquitlam to a developer for $43 million below the appraised value in one of the hottest real estate markets in the country. Horgan said the government should now release appraisals for all Crown assets that have been sold. "The reason we need to see all of these appraisals - [and] not go through a circuitous [freedom of information] route that could take years - is that we need to have public confidence that the government is putting the people of B.C. ahead of their political objectives," he said. Finance Minister Mike de Jong promised to release a list of asset sales with appraised and assessed values next week. The complete appraisal reports will still have to be released under freedom of information rules, he said.

"There is a process for the release of the reports and that will continue to be followed." De Jong said the plan to sell surplus properties was never a secret. The government laid out details in budget documents, hired a reputable firm to sell them and received fair market value, he said. The Panorama property was purchased years ago for a new hospital, but became surplus when the hospital was built at the Surrey Memorial site. "We said in the budget in 2012, in 2013, in 2014, we were going to identify properties that were surplus to the needs of the government," de Jong said. "We were going to put them on the market. We were going to allow the private sector to unleash their energy and put people to work. "We set targets, and, as foreign as this might be to the members opposite, we followed through."

he main difference is that although these countries have universally accessible health-care systems, they also allow people to receive private medical services by paying outof-pocket or purchasing insurance. Their systems result in better overall care, for two main reasons. First, competition from private hospitals and medical practices provides an incentive for the public system to improve. As the C.D. Howe Institute's Åke Blomqvist and Colin Busby argue in a policy paper released last month, in Canada, "lack of competition between provincial health insurance plans and privately financed medicine has lessened the pressure on publicsector managers and politicians to improve an inadequately performing system."

Having a parallel private alternative also helps reduce wait times in the public system. Last year, Canadians waited an average of 9.8 weeks to receive medically necessary treatments after seeing a specialist - three weeks longer than what most doctors consider to be "reasonable." In the Commonwealth Fund study, Canada ranked dead last in terms of "timeliness of care," while the U.K. came in third and Australia sixth. (The U.K. and Australia also ranked first and second respectively in terms of quality of care.) Fears of a mass migration of doctors into the private system are easily answered. In the U.K., doctors trained in public universities are required to work in the National Health Service (the public system) for at least two years before they can move into the private system. Doctors who receive NHS funding are also allowed to set up parallel private practices, but must work 40 hours a week for the NHS.

Fortunately, Canadian provinces have quite a bit of leeway to experiment with allowing more privately delivered medical services. As Mssrs. Blomqvist and Busby argue, "Although this is not widely understood, the [Canada Health Act] does not rule out transactions in which providers are paid privately for their services. There is also no prohibition on private insurance that covers the same services as those under the public plans, provided these services are supplied entirely independent of publicly funded services." Indeed, all that is needed is for provincial governments to take the initiative and remove some of their restrictions on private health services.

The health-care debate in this country has traditionally focused on comparing our system with that of the United States. Yet the truth is that we have much more in common with European and other industrialized countries. As many of these countries have shown us, it is possible to provide world-class health care that is accessible to all people, while allowing those who choose to pay for private services to do so here at home, rather than travelling overseas.

In Ontario, the cost is typically much lower at $45 per trip, but increases to $240 if the receiving physician deems it unnecessary. The reality on the ground violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the Canada Health Act: Equal access to physician and hospital services means little if safe passage to them is anything but. There are a variety of options to reduce this inequity in access. One option is to follow New Brunswick's lead and offer full coverage. An alternative would be to only charge users if the ambulance ride is deemed medically unnecessary. However, differentiating "appropriate" from "inappropriate" ambulance use isn't straightforward, and can vary between providers. What's more, evidence suggests that institutions - schools, long-term care facilities, hospitals and police services - more often initiate potentially unnecessary ambulance services than do individuals, as a result of compliance with internal policy or protocol.

As with other areas of health care, user fees are a blunt tool: they reduce both necessary and unnecessary use of services. The risk of footing the bill could deter people, especially those living in poverty, from calling for help. This would deny them not only safe transport to hospital, but also the initial emergency interventions by paramedics that can mean the difference between life and death. Public education and enhanced availability of primary care are more effective ways to decrease unnecessary ambulance use. Ideally, ambulance services should be fully covered for everyone. This would, however, require provincial governments to take on more of the costs. In Nova Scotia, that cost is an estimated $9.7 million, according to the Nova Scotia Citizen's Health Care Network. This is a drop in the bucket of the $6.2-billion Nova Scotia health-care budget; a small investment to ensure everyone, regardless of income, has access to vital emergency care. The variety and inequity of ambulance charges in Canada is a policy mess. Canada's health ministers should work together to establish a consistent and compassionate approach that balances cost with the need to remove barriers to care. Ryan Meili is an expert adviser

with EvidenceNetwork.ca, a family physician in Saskatoon and founder of Upstream: Institute for a Healthy Society. @ryanmeili Carolyn Nowry is a family physician in Calgary. They are both board members with Canadian Doctors for Medicare.

Hundreds of thousands of patients on B.C. waiting lists know that role is not being fulfilled. The health minister and premier recently admitted that patients were waiting inappropriately long times, and a health region spokesperson reported some "life-saving" procedures were being delayed. Provincial health commissions were the brainchild of Tommy Douglas, who believed they should be chaired by doctors and never subject to political influence. But the MSC is always chaired by a politicallyappointed civil servant. Douglas supported premiums and felt they made the public cost-conscious, creating a sense of individual responsibility. He would never have condoned the practices of raising premiums to compensate for fiscal failures, nor reporting low-income earners, delinquent with their payments, to collection agencies. The commission is wasting health care funds as it displays contempt, in terms of its fiscal and social accountability, toward taxpayers.. In one example of carelessness and incompetence, I received cheques from them totalling hundreds of thousands of dollars, for services on patients that I had never seen. I also received confidential personal information on hundreds of patients unrelated to me or our clinic. When informed of their error, they responded: "Just mail them back." They were not inclined to investigate.

In Canada, health providers are compelled by law to share confidential patient files with government employees armed with the right to inspect and copy patients' files. Your health record is considered public property; you cannot block government access. Consent is not needed, and you are not notified when Big Brother is looking. Privacy rights have been legislated away. I witnessed a defeated provincial cabinet minister's medical file being reviewed by a newly elected government. In the 1989 tainted blood inquiry, Justice Horace Krever was "shocked by the inadequate laws, the abuses of confidentiality, and the fact that so many people - except the patient - had access to medical records." Little has changed.

The MSC is also charged with defining what services are "medically necessary" - and therefore publicly insured. They have never created a definition, but have arbitrarily designated clearly essential services such as ambulance, drugs, physiotherapy, artificial limbs, and dentistry as unnecessary, creating a true two-tier structure of care. The government's last action in delaying our constitutional challenge on patient rights resulted from a "last minute" discovery of 300,000 documents they were legally bound to provide. After a delay of more than seven years, the plaintiffs in the coming June trial will confirm that the Supreme Court of Canada's 2005 finding - that patients are suffering and dying on waiting lists - applies in B.C. Supporters of a system that limits timely access are complicit in such outcomes.

Our public sector health system (MSC included), is grossly overstaffed with non-clinical workers. A 2011 study revealed that Canada has 11 times as many public health bureaucrats per capita as Germany, where there are no waiting lists. Canada has 14 ministries of health, each with bloated bureaucracies and commissions scavenging dollars that should go to patient care. The mentality that cost inefficiencies can be balanced by increased taxes or "premiums" is responsible for our escalating charges. Independent health groups in Europe rated Canada as last in value for money compared to hybrid public-private systems that have accessible public systems. The Commonwealth Fund, a non-profit foundation focused on issues affecting lowincome groups, ranked Canada 10th of 11 health systems in developed nations.

What specific changes would I incorporate if I were minister of health? Apart from incorporating the best practices of other hybrid systems (including private-sector competition), I would dismantle the ministry and its committees and commissions. Then I would resign. The finance ministry could fund patients directly (thus empowering them), and also assign budgets to the newly emancipated, self-regulated health organizations, allowing them to cater directly to patient needs. Maybe our June constitutional court challenge will point us in that direction. Dr. Brian Day is an orthopedic surgeon, medical director of the Cambie Surgery Centre, and a former president of the Canadian Medical Association.

Dr. Brian Day says bureaucrats at the Medical Services Commission sent him cheques totalling hundreds of thousands of dollars for services on patients he had never seen.