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Govind Rao

Hundreds attend Bridgewater town hall to save health care < Health care, Nova Scotia | ... - 0 views

cupe.ca/...s-attend-bridgewater-town-hall

from heather accord cupe campaign NS

shared by Govind Rao on 05 May 14 - No Cached
  • May 1, 2014
  • It was standing room only at the April 29&nbsp;Save our health care town hall in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia. The crowd of 350 buzzed with energy as they shared stories and heard from CUPE National President Paul Moist, Council of Canadians National Chairperson Maude Barlow, and Nova Scotia Citizens’ Health Care Network Co-ordinator James Hutt. CUPE and the Council are organizing in ridings held by Conservative MPs. The campaign draws attention to the expiry of the federal Health Accord, and calls on the federal government to negotiate a new accord with the provinces to protect and expand public health care.
Govind Rao

Rural ERs better in Quebec than Ontario - Infomart - 0 views

www.fpinfomart.ca/doc/doc_display.php?key=pr|246200|ntnp|20150506|219898181

from heather rural emerg Ontario Quebec hospital cuts

shared by Govind Rao on 06 May 15 - No Cached
  • National Post Wed May 6 2015
  • Rural emergency departments in Ontario have dramatically fewer CT scans, specialists and nearby intensive-care units than those in Quebec, suggests a new study that adds to evidence of wide quality gaps in Canada's emergency health care. The findings parallel a similar disparity the researchers discovered earlier between rural ERs in British Columbia and Quebec.
  • They are now studying whether that lack of specialists and equipment affects the number of non-urban Canadians who die from trauma, stroke, heart attack and severe infection. The early results are "concerning," said Richard Fleet, a Laval University emergency-medicine professor who co-authored the newest research. "In a rural emergency department, people actually save lives by working as teams," said Dr. Fleet, who practised in a small-town B.C. emergency department before heading to Quebec. "For emergencies ... it's really good to have these backup systems in house."
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  • One prominent rural ER physician in Ontario rejected the notion that his province's departments are inferior, saying the focus is more on sending the sickest patients to big trauma centres. Across the country, however, wide variations in emergencydepartment standards definitely do exit, said Alan Drummond, a spokesman for the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians. "It's a crapshoot, when you go to any hospital in this country, in terms of what you're going to get in the type and quality of care," he said. "We have national variability and for 23 per cent of Canadians (who live outside cities), that's unacceptable." About 6 million Canadians live in rural areas, tend to be older on average, have greater health needs, and are more likely to suffer traumatic injury, partly due to the prominence of dangerous professions like farming and logging.
  • Fleet became interested in the relative quality of emergency service after cutbacks meant his former hospital in Nelson, B.C., could offer only "bare-bones services to a high-risk population." He lobbied for additional funding, but realized there were no published data comparing different Canadian emergency departments. In the most recent study, just published in the journal PlosOne, he and colleagues looked at rural departments with 24/7 service and an ability to admit patients to acute-care beds in their hospitals - 26 facilities in Quebec and 62 in Ontario. If anything, the Ontario ERs appeared more isolated on average, with a greater percentage of them being at least 300 kilometres from a trauma centre.
  • Yet 92 per cent of the Quebec emergency departments had a local intensive-care unit, compared to 31 per cent of the Ontario ones. Just over 80 per cent of the Quebec ERs had a general surgeon available on call, versus a third of the Ontario emergency departments. Fleet said he is not sure why Quebec's rural ERs are better equipped, given the provinces' spending on health care is similar per capita. It may relate to the fact its rural hospitals have fewer foreign-trained doctors, who may feel less empowered to demand better facilities. But Drummond said Ontario has a different protocol that ensures rural ER physicians are well-trained to provide basic emergency services - such as treating shock and blocked airways - and emphasizes funnelling critically ill patients to trauma centres in larger cities. The province's CritiCall system helps rural hospitals find facilities that can take their patients.
  • However, he agreed that having a CT scanner is now crucial to emergency departments anywhere making accurate diagnoses; the one his hospital in Perth, Ont., acquired five years ago "changed the way we practice." Just nine of 62 full-time rural Ontario departments had a CT scanner, according to the new study.
Govind Rao

Rally for Equality and Solidarity | CUPE New Brunswick - 0 views

nb.cupe.ca/...ly-for-equality-and-solidarity

from heather NB campaign gender poverty

shared by Govind Rao on 22 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Women on the March until we are all free: Rally for Equality and Solidarity
  • In front of the NB Legislature, Fredericton, 12 noon, Friday, April 24, 2015
  • New Brunswick will join the International World March of Women 2015 in a global day of action on Friday, April 24, which marks the second anniversary of the horrific Bangladesh factory collapse that killed 1,135 workers. The focus of this year’s march is precarious work.
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  • Freedom for our bodies, our land and our territories.”
  • Approximately, 100,000 people in New Brunswick, almost one in seven, live below the poverty line. Almost one third of single-parent households in New Brunswick are poor, according to 2011 statistics. Following the most recent economic crisis, governments have been implementing austerity budgets and New Brunswick is no exception. New Brunswickers are still struggling for pay equity, access to reproductive health care and child care.
  • Elsipogtog women made international headlines when they put their bodies on the line to defend their territories against shale gas. Maya women in Guatemala are demanding justice in Canadian courts for rape and murder committed by a Canadian mine’s security guards. Rape is a weapon used in wars around the world.
  • More of us are demanding action be taken for our missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and making the links to capitalism, colonization and destruction of the land.
  • This global feminist movement brings together diverse groups, including women’s groups, unions, anti-poverty groups, Indigenous activists, international solidarity groups and many others. Since the first March in 2000, activists have organized local, national and global marches, hundreds of workshops and actions and lobbying of governments and international organizations.
  • Speakers:
  • The 4th International World March of Women was launched on March 8, International Women’s Day, and will conclude October 17, 2015, International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.
Govind Rao

'We have the evidence ... Why aren't we providing evidence-based care?'; Mental illness... - 0 views

www.fpinfomart.ca/doc/doc_display.php?key=pr|246199|ntgm|20150523|221089241

from heather mental health privatization

shared by Govind Rao on 26 May 15 - No Cached
  • The Globe and Mail Sat May 23 2015
  • It's 4:30 on a Friday afternoon at her Sherbrooke, Que., clinic and Marie Hayes takes a deep breath before opening the door to her final patient of the day, who has arrived without an appointment. The 32-year-old mother immediately lists her complaints: She feels dizzy. She has abdominal pain. "It is always physical and always catastrophic," Dr. Hayes will later tell me. In the exam room, she runs through the standard checkup, pressing on the patient's abdomen, recording her symptoms, just as she has done almost every week for months. "There's something wrong with me," the patient says, with a look of panic. Dr. Hayes tries to reassure her, to no avail. In any case, the doctor has already reached her diagnosis: severe anxiety. Dr. Hayes prescribed medication during a previous visit, but the woman stopped taking it after two days because it made her nauseated and dizzy. She needs structured psychotherapy - a licensed therapist trained to bring her anxiety under control. But the wait list for public care is about a year, says Dr. Hayes, and the patient can't afford the cost of private sessions.
  • Meanwhile, the woman is paying a steep personal price: At home, she says, she spends most days in bed. She is managing to care for her two young children - for now - but her husband also suffers from anxiety, and the situation is far from ideal. Dr. Hayes does her best, spending a full hour trying to calm her down, and the woman is less agitated when she leaves. But the doctor knows she will be back next week. And that their meeting will go much the same as it did today. In its broad strokes, this is a scene that repeats itself in thousands of doctors' offices every day, right across the country. It is part and parcel of a system that denies patients the best scientific-based care, and comes with a massive price tag, to the economy, families and the health care system. Canadian physicians bill provincial governments $1-billion a year for "counselling and psychotherapy" - one third of which goes to family doctors - a service many of them acknowledge they are not best suited to provide, and that doesn't come close to covering patient need. Meanwhile, psychologists and social workers are largely left out of the publicly funded health-care system, their expertise available only to Canadians with the resources to pay for them.
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  • Imagine if a Canadian diagnosed with cancer were told she could receive chemotherapy paid for by the health-care system, but would have to cough up the cash herself if she needed radiation. Or that she could have a few weeks of treatment, and then be sent home even if she needed more. That would never fly. If doctors, say, find a tumour in a patient's colon, the government kicks in and offers the mainstream treatment that is most effective. But for many Canadians diagnosed with a mental illness, the prescription is very different. The treatment they receive, and how much of it they get, will largely be decided not on evidence-based best practices but on their employment benefits and income level: Those who can afford it pay for it privately. Those who cannot are stuck on long wait lists, or have to fall back on prescription medications. Or get no help at all. But according to a large and growing body of research, psychotherapy is not simply a nice-to-have option; it should be a front-line treatment, particularly for the two most costly mental illnesses in Canada: anxiety and depression - which also constitute more than 80 per cent of all psychiatric diagnoses.
  • Why aren't we providing evidence-based care?" .. The case for psychotherapy Research has found that psychotherapy is as effective as medication - and in some cases works better. It also often does a better job of preventing or forestalling relapse, reducing doctor's appointments and emergency-room visits, and making it more cost-effective in the long run.
  • Therapy works, researchers say, because it engages the mind of the patient, requires active participation in treatment, and specifically targets the social and stress-related factors that contribute to poor mental health. There are a variety of therapies, but the evidence is strongest for cognitive behavioural therapy - an approach that focuses on changing negative thinking - in large part because CBT, which is timelimited and very structured, lends itself to clinical trials. (Similar support exists for interpersonal therapy, and it is emerging for mindfulness, with researchers trying to find out what works best for which disorders.) Research into the efficacy of therapy is increasing, but there is less of it overall than for drugs - as therapy doesn't have the advantage of well-heeled Big Pharma benefactors. In 2013, a team of European researchers collated the results of 67 studies comparing drugs to therapy; after adjusting for dropouts, there was no significant difference between the most often-used drugs - selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) - and psychotherapy.
  • The issue is not one against the other," says Montreal psychiatrist Alain Lesage, director of research at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute. "I am a physician; whatever works, I am good. We know that when patients prefer one to another, they do better if they have choice." Several studies have backed up that notion. Many patients are reluctant to take medication for fear of side effects and the possibility of difficult withdrawal; research shows that more than half of patients receiving medication stop taking it after six months. A small collection of recent studies has found that therapy can cause changes in the brain similar to those brought about by medication. In people with depression, for instance, the amygdala (located deep within the brain, it processes basic memories and controls our instinctive fight-or-flight reaction) works in overdrive, while the prefrontal cortex (which regulates rational thought) is sluggish. Research shows that antidepressants calm the amygdala; therapy does the same, though to a lesser extent.
  • But psychotherapy also appears to tune up the prefrontal cortex more than does medication. This is why, researchers believe, therapy works especially well in preventing relapse - an important benefit, since extending the time between acute episodes of illnesses prevents them from becoming chronic and more debilitating. The theory, then, is that psychotherapy does a better job of helping patients consciously cope with their unconscious responses to stress.
  • According to treatment guidelines by leading international professional and scientific organizations - including Canada's own expert panel, the Canadian Network for Mood and Anxiety Treatments - psychotherapy should be considered as a first option in treatment, alone or in combination with medication. And it is "highly recommended" in maintaining recovery in the long term. Britain's independent, research-guided scientific body, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, has concluded that therapy should be tried before drugs in mild to moderate cases of depression and anxiety - a finding that led to the creation of a $760million public system, which now handles therapy referrals for nearly one million people a year.
  • In 2012, Canada's Mental Health Commission estimated that only about one in three adults and one in four children are receiving support and treatment when they need it. Ironically, anti-stigma campaigns designed to help people understand mental illness may only make those statistics worse. In Toronto, for instance, putting up posters in subway stations in 2010 had the unexpected effect of spiking the volume of walk-ins at nearby emergency rooms by as much as 45 per cent in 12 months. Dr. Kurdyak treated many of them at CAMH. The system, he says, "has been conveniently ignoring this unmet need. It functions as if two-thirds of the people suffering won't get help." What would happen if the healthcare system outright "ignored" two-third of tumour diagnoses?
  • Essentially, argues Dr. Lesage, adding therapy into the health-care system is like putting a new, highly effective drug on the table for doctors. "Think about it," he says. "We have a new antidepressant. It works as well as many others, and it may even have some advantages - it works better for remission - with fewer side effects. The patients may prefer it. And [in the long run] it doesn't cost more than what we have. How can it not be covered?" ..
  • A heavy price This isn't just a medical issue; it's an economic one. Mental illness accounts for roughly 50 per cent of family doctors' time, and more hospital-bed days than cancer. Nearly four million Canadians have a mood disorder: more than all cases of diabetes (2.2 million) and heart disease (1.4 million) combined.
  • Mental illness - and depression, in particular - is the leading cause of disability, accounting for 30 per cent of workplace-insurance claims, and 70 per cent of total compensation costs. In 2012, an Ontario study calculated that the burden of mental illness and addiction was 1.5 times that of all cancers, and more than seven times the cost of all infectious diseases. Mental illness is so debilitating because, unlike physical ailments, it often takes root in adolescence and peaks among Canadians in their 20s and 30s, just as they are heading into higher education, or building careers and families. Untreated, symptoms reverberate through all aspects of life, routinely trapping people in poverty and homelessness. More than one-third of Ontario residents receiving social assistance have a mental illness. The cost to society is clearly immense.
  • Yet, when family doctors were asked why they didn't refer more patients to therapy in a 2008 Canadian survey, the main reason they gave was cost. For many Canadians, private therapy is a luxury, especially if families are already wrestling with the economic fallout from mental illness. Costs vary across provinces, but psychologists in private practice may charge more than $200 an hour in major centres. And it's not just the uninsured who are affected.
  • Although about 60 per cent of Canadians have some form of private insurance, the amount available for therapy may cover only a handful of sessions. Those with the best benefits are more likely to be higherincome workers with stable employment. Federal public servants, notably, have one of the best plans in the country - their benefits were doubled in 2014 to $2,000 annually for psychotherapy. Many of those who can pay for therapy are doing so: A 2013 consultant's study commissioned by the Canadian Psychological Association found that $950-million is spent annually on private-practice psychologists by Canadians, insurance companies and workers compensation boards. The CPA estimates t
  • These are the patients that family doctors juggle, the ones who eat up appointment time, and never seem to get better, the ones caught on waiting lists. Sometimes, they have already been bounced in and out of the system, received little help, and have become wary of trying again. A 40-something mother recovering from breast cancer, suffering from chronic depression post-treatment, debilitated by fear her cancer will return. A university student, struggling with anxiety, who hasn't been to class for three weeks and may soon be kicked out of school. A teenager with bulimia removed from an eatingdisorder program because she couldn't follow the rules. They are the ones dangling on waiting lists in the public system for what often amounts to a handful of talk-therapy sessions, who don't have the money to pay for private therapy, or have too little coverage to get the full course of appointments they need.
  • Canada's investment does not match that burden. Only about 7 per cent of health-care spending goes to mental health. Even recent increases pale when compared to other countries: According to a study by the Canadian Mental Health Association, Canada increased per-capita funding by $5.22 in 2011. The British government, meanwhile, kicked in an extra 12 times that amount per citizen, and Australia added nearly 20 times as much as we did. Falling off a cliff, again and again
  • In Winnipeg, Dr. Stanley Szajkowski watched for months as his patient, a woman in her 80s, slowly declined. Her husband had died and she was spiralling into a severe depression. At every appointment, she looked thinner, more dishevelled. She wasn't sleeping, she admitted, often through tears. Sometimes she thought of suicide. She lived alone, with no family nearby, and no resources of her own to pay for therapy. "You do what you can," says Dr. Szajkowksi. "You provide some support and encouragement." He did his best, but he always had other patients waiting.
  • hat 30 per cent of private patients pay out-ofpocket themselves. When the afflicted don't seek help, the cost isn't restricted to their own pocketbook. People with mental-health problems are significantly more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, and to become physically sick, further increasing health-care costs. A 2014 study by Oxford University researchers found that having a mental illness reduced life expectancy by 10 to 20 years, roughly the same as did smoking and obesity. A 2008 Statistics Canada study linked depression to new-onset heart disease in the general population. A 2014 U.S. study found that women under the age of 55 are twice as likely to suffer or die from a heart attack, or require heart surgery, if they have moderate to severe depression. The result: clogged-up doctors' offices, ERs, and operating rooms. And an inexorable burden for the patients' families forced to fill the gaps in caregiving - or carry on when they lose a loved one.
  • Patients refer to it as falling repeatedly off a cliff. And they can only manage the climb back up so many times. Family doctors interviewed for this story admitted that they are often "handholding" patients with nowhere else to go. "I am making them feel cared for, I am providing a supportive ear that they may not get anywhere else," says Dr. Batya Grundland, a physician who has been in family practice at Toronto's Women's College Hospital for almost a decade. "But do I think I am moving them forward with regard to their illness, and helping them cope better? I am going to say rarely." More senior doctors have told her that once in a while "a light bulb goes off" for the patients, but often only after many years. That's not an efficient use of health dollars, she points out - not when there are trained therapists who could do the job better. However, she says, "in some cases, I may be the only person they have."
  • Family doctors aren't the only ones struggling to find therapy for their patients. "I do a hundred consultations a year," says clinical psychiatrist Joel Paris, a professor at McGill University and research associate at the Montreal Jewish General, "and one of the most common situations is that the patient has tried a few anti-depressants, they have not responded very well, and from their story it is obvious they would benefit from psychotherapy. But where do they go? We have community clinics here in Montreal with six-to-12-month waiting lists even for brief therapy." A fractured, inefficient system
  • "You fall into the role that is handed to you," says Antoine Gagnon, a family doctor in Osgoode, on the outskirts of Ottawa. He tries to set aside 20-minute appointments before lunch or at the end of the day to provide "active listening" to his patients with anxiety and depression. Many of them are farmers or self-employed, without any private coverage for therapy. "Five of those minutes are spent talking about the weather," he says, "and then maybe you get into the meat of the problem, but the reality is we don't have the appropriate amount of time to give to therapy, even to listen, really." Often, he watches his patients' symptoms worsen over several months, until they meet the threshold of a clinical diagnosis. "The whole system could save on productivity and money if people were actually able to get the treatment they needed."
  • But these issues aren't insurmountable, as other countries have demonstrated. Britain, for instance, has trained thousands of university graduates to become therapists in its new public program, following research showing that, as long they have the proper skills, people don't need PhDs to be effective therapists. Australia, which has created a pay-for-service system, also makes wide use of online support to cost-effectively reach remote communities.
  • Except for a small fraction of GPs who specialize in psychotherapy, few family doctors have the training - or the time - to provide structured therapy. Saadia Hameed, a GP in a family-health team in London, Ont., has been researching access to psychotherapy for an advanced degree. Many of the doctors she has interviewed had trouble even producing a clear definition of therapy. One told her, "If a patient cries, than it's psychotherapy." Another described it as "listening to their woes." A 2007 survey of 163 family doctors in Ontario found that almost four out of five had not received training in cognitive behavioural therapy, and knew little about it. "Do family doctors really need to do that much psychotherapy," Dr. Hameed asks, "when there are other people trained - and better trained - to do it?"
  • What further frustrates treatment for physicians and patients is lack of access to specialists within the system. Across the country, family doctors describe the difficulty of reaching a psychiatrist to consult on a diagnosis or followup with their patients. In a telling 2011 study, published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, researchers conducted a real-world experiment to see how easily a GP could locate a psychiatrist willing to see a patient with depression. Researchers called 297 psychiatrists in Vancouver, and reached 230. Of the 70 who said they would consider taking referrals, 64 required extensive written documentation, and could not give a wait-time estimate. Only six were willing to take the patient "immediately," but even then, their wait times ranged from four to 55 days. Psychiatrists are in increasingly short supply in Canada, and there's strong evidence that we're not making the best use of these highly trained specialists. They can - and often do - provide fee-for-service psychotherapy in a private setting, which limits their ability to meet the huge demand to consult with family doctors and treat the most severe cases.
  • A recent Ontario study by a team at CAMH found that while waiting lists exist in both urban and rural centres, the practices of psychiatrists in those locations tend to look very different. Among full-time psychiatrists in Toronto, 10 per cent saw fewer than 40 patients, and 40 per cent saw fewer than 100 - on average, their practices were half the size of psychiatrists in smaller centres. The patients for those urban psychiatrists with the smallest practices were also more likely to fall in the highest income bracket, and less likely to have been previously hospitalized for a mental illness than those in the smaller centres.
  • And those therapy sessions are being billed with no monitoring from a health-care system already scrimping on dollars, yet spending a lot on this care: On average, psychiatrists earn $216,000 a year. There is nothing to stop psychiatrists from seeing the same patients for years, and no system to ensure the patients with the greatest need get priority. In Australia, Britain and the United States, by contrast, billing for psychiatrists has been adjusted to encourage them to reduce psychotherapy sessions and serve more as consultants, particularly for the most severe cases, as other specialists do.
  • As the Canadian system exists now, says Benoit Mulsant, the physician-in-chief at CAMH and also a psychiatrist, the doctors in his specialty "can do whatever they please. If I wanted, I could have a roster of actor patients who tell me entertaining stories, and I would be paid the same as someone who is treating homeless people. ... By treating the rich and famous, there is zero risk of being punched in the face by a patient." Left out in all this, by and large, are other professionals who can provide therapy. It doesn't help that the rules are often murky around who can call themselves psychotherapists. While psychologists and social workers are licensed under their professional associations, in some provinces a person can call himself a marriage counsellor or music therapist with no one demanding they be certified. In 2007, Ontario passed a law to regulate psychotherapists, requiring them to register with a provincial college that would set standards and handle complaints. Currently, however, the law is in limbo, although the government has said it will finally bring it into force by December. The brain keeps many secrets
  • Science, however, has yet to find depression's equivalent of insulin. Despite being scanned, poked and stimulated over and over and over again, the brain keeps its secrets. The "chemical imbalance" theory is now viewed as simplistic at best. It may not do much for patients, either: A 2014 study published in the journal Behaviour Research and Therapy suggested that, rather than reassuring them, focusing on the biological explanation for depression actually made patients feel more pessimistic and lacking in control. SSRIs work by increasing the amount of serotonin, a chemical that helps deliver messages within the brain and is known to influence mood. But researchers aren't sure why the drugs help some patients and fail with others. "Basically, it's like we have a bucket of water and we pour it over the patient's head," says Dr. Georg Northoff, the University of Ottawa's Michael Smith chair of Neurosciences and Mental Health. "But you want a drug that injects the water in a very specific brain regions or brain system, which we don't have."
  • Critics of therapy have argued that it's basically "good listening" - comparable to having a sympathetic friend across the kitchen table - and that in the real world of mercurial patients and practitioners of varying abilities, a pill just works better. That's true in many cases, especially when the symptoms are severe and the patients is suicidal: a fast-acting medication is safer, and may even be necessary before starting talk therapy. The staunchest advocates of therapy do not suggest it should be the first course of treatment for psychosis, or debilitating chronic depression, or mania - although, in those cases, there is evidence that psychotherapy and medication work well in tandem. (A 2011 meta-analysis found that patients with severe depression who received a combination approach had higher recovery rates and were less likely to drop out of treatment.) But drugs also don't work as well as the manufacturers would like us to think. Roughly one-third of patients given a drug will see no benefit (although they often respond to a second or third medication). In randomly controlled trials, drugs often perform only marginally better than sugar pills.
  • Yet it's talk therapy that the public often views most skeptically. "Until you go to a therapist, or a member of your family has a serious psychological problem, people are unsympathetic [about therapy]," says Dr. Paris, the Montreal psychiatrist. "They are very skeptical, and they don't believe the research. It's amazing, because pharmaceutical trials will get approval for a drug on the basis of two clinical trials that they paid for. And we have 100 clinical trials and no one believes us."
  • Dr. Ajantha Jayabarathan, an assistant professor at Dalhousie University's medical school, spent her early years as a family doctor in Spryfield, N.S., trying to manage an overload of mental-health cases. Most of her patients had little insurance; there was one reduced-cost counselling service in town, but the waiting lists were long. In 2000, her group practice became a test site for a shared-care project, which gave the doctors access to a mental-health team, including weekly in-person consultations with a psychiatrist. "It was transformative," she says. "We looked after everything in-house.
  • Over time, Dr. Jayabarathan says, she learned how to properly assess mental illness in patients, and how to use medication more effectively. "I just made it my business to teach myself what to do." It's the kind of workaround GPs are increasingly experimenting with, waiting for the system to catch up. Who would pay - and how?
  • The case for expanding publicly funded access to therapy is gaining traction in Canada. In 2012, the health commissioner of Quebec recommended therapy be covered by the province; it is now being studied by Quebec's science-based health body (INESSS), which is expected to report back next year. A new Quebec-based organization of doctors, researchers and mental-health advocates called the Coalition for Access to Psychotherapy (CAP) is lobbying the government.
  • In Manitoba, the Liberal Party - albeit well behind in the polls - has made the public funding of psychologists one of its campaign platforms for the province's spring 2016 election. In Saskatchewan, the government commissioned, and has since endorsed, a mental-health action plan that includes providing online therapy - though politicians have given themselves 10 years to accomplish it. Michael Kirby, the former head of the Canadian Mental Health Commission, has been advocating for eight annual sessions of therapy to be covered for children and youth in need.
  • There are significant hurdles: Which practitioners would provide therapy, and how would they be paid? What therapies would be covered, and for how long? Complicating every aspect of major mentalhealth change in Canada is the question of who should shoulder the cost: the provinces or Ottawa. In a written statement in response to questions from The Globe and Mail, federal Health Minister Rona Ambrose lobbed the issue back at her provincial counterparts, pointing out that the Canada Health Act does not "preclude provinces and territories from extending public coverage to other services or providers such as psychologists."
  • One result can be overloaded family doctors minimizing mental-health problems. "If you have nothing to offer someone," asks Dr. Anderson, "how much are you going to dig around to find out what is going on?" Some doctors also admit that the lack of resources can lead to physicians cherry-picking patients who don't have mental illness. And yet family physicians alone bill about $361million a year for counselling or psychotherapy in Canada - 5.6 million visits of roughly 30 minutes each. This is a broad category, and not always specifically related to mental health (some of it includes drug counselling, and a certain amount of coaching is a necessary part of the patient-doctor relationship). When it is psychotherapy, however, doctors admit it's often more supportive listening than actual therapy.
  • So how would Canada pay for access to such therapy? It wouldn't be cheap, in the short term. The savings would come from what Canadians would not have to spend in the long term: in additional medical and drug costs, emergency-room visits and hospital stays, and in unnecessary disability payments, to say nothing of better long-term health outcomes for patients given good care earlier. Some of the figures being tossed around sound staggering. Rolling out a version of Britain's centre-based program across Canada would cost $950-million. Michael Kirby's plan would amount to $1,000 annually per patient. A 2013 report commissioned by the Canadian Psychological Association calculated that, based on predicted need, and assuming no coverage from private health-care plans, providing an average of six sessions of therapy a year would cost an estimated $2.8-billion annually.
  • But any of those figures would still be a fraction of the roughly $210-billion that Canada spends annually on health care. Figuring out how to make the system most costeffective is, according to sources, currently delaying the INESSS report to the Quebec government. "You need to facilitate the government," says Helen- Maria Vasiliadis, a professor of community health at the University of Sherbrooke. "You can't be going to policymakers and showing them billions and billions of dollars. People start having heart attacks. With evidence in hand, we have to present possible solutions."
  • An insurance-based plan is the proposal that has emerged from the Quebec-based CAP group, which sent its proposal to Quebec's health minister last month. In its design, the system would work much like Quebec's public drug plan - Quebeckers not covered through work plans would contribute to a provincial insurance program for therapy. That would be similar to the system that Germany has used for decades. One step forward, one step back
  • Last year, the Sherbrooke clinic where Marie Hayes works received provincial funding for a part-time psychologist and a full-time social worker. With a roster of 25,000 patients, the clinic team laid out clear guidelines for the psychologist, who would consult on cases and screen patients, and be limited to a mere four sessions of actual counselling with any one patient. "We wanted to be careful she didn't become a waiting list - like everything in the system," says Dr. Hayes. The social worker helps guide patients into services such as housing and addiction counselling. They have also offered group sessions for depression management at the clinic. As stretched as those new professionals are in such a large practice, Dr. Hayes says the addition of that mental-health team is improving the care she can provide patients. Recently, for instance, the 32- year-old mother with anxiety attended sessions with the psychologist. "She is making progress," says Dr. Hayes, "slowly."
  • At Women's College Hospital in Toronto, Dr. Grundland is not so lucky. Asked to describe a difficult case, the family-practice physician mentions a patient suffering from depression after a lifechanging accident. Every month, doctor and patient would repeat the same conversation they'd already had more than a dozen times - and make little real headway. Her patient, says Dr. Grundland, needs a trained therapist: someone she can see regularly, to help her move past her frustration, counsel her about addiction, and ease the burden on her family.
  • But there's no extra money in the patient's budget for a psychologist. "I do my best," Dr. Grundland says, "but it's not my area of expertise." Meanwhile, the patient isn't getting better, and in the time that it takes to make it through one appointment with her, Dr. Grundland could see three other people with problems she was actually trained to treat. "But," says Dr. Grundland, "she has nowhere else to go." Erin Anderssen is a feature writer at The Globe and Mail. OPEN MINDS How to build a better mental health care system
  • The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health has purchased advertisements to accompany this series. While CAMH professionals are quoted in this story, the organization had no involvement in the creation or production of this, or any other story in the series. $20.7-billion The cost, according to a 2012 Conference Board of Canada report, of lost productivity each year due to mental illness. What else does $20-billion represent?
  • $20B: Canadian spending on national defence, 2012-13 $20B: Market valuation of Airbnb, 2015 $21B: Kitchener-CambridgeWaterloo region's GDP, 2009 $21B: Amount food manufacturing contributed to the economy, 2012
Govind Rao

Tapestry weaves a spell at UBC; Taking a hospitality approach to seniors living takes t... - 0 views

www.fpinfomart.ca/doc/doc_display.php?key=pr|246243|vasn|20150520|220837547

from heather ltc bc privatization

shared by Govind Rao on 20 May 15 - No Cached
  • Vancouver Sun Wed May 20 2015
  • It's a life-altering decision to move on from a home where you may have raised a family and lived for decades. Many approaching their golden years resist the idea of going into an assisted-living facility for fear of losing their independence in an institutionalized setting.
  • That's why communities like Tapestry at Wesbrook Village are hoping to change the definition of what it means to live in seniors' housing.
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  • The two towers of the development look very much like an upscale residential development. They are connected with a gracious lobby manned around the clock by attentive concierges. There's a gym - complete with personal trainers - on an upper floor, as well as a communal kitchen that can be used for cooking demonstrations. There is enough polished stone and fancy millwork in the suites to satisfy even the most sophisticated of tastes. Outside, residents can putter in the gardens or host a barbecue on the terrace.
  • The executive chef - who previously worked at high-end Vancouver restaurant Italian Kitchen - sources produce directly from the nearby UBC Farm and refreshes the menu quarterly, with input from the residents.
  • A community shuttle can take people around to various neighbourhood destinations, although grocery shopping, banking, and medical appointments are all within very easy walking distance. A private car with driver can also be booked for an additional cost.
  • The meal options at Tapestry may be where it differs the most significantly from other seniors' facilities. Residents can cook for themselves in the fully-equipped kitchens in their individual suites, have meals brought to their suites, meet up with friends at the on-site pub, or entertain friends and family at the restaurant-style dining room. There are no set meal times and there is no assigned seating. The cost of the restaurant meals are debited individually from a monthly credit, much like the dining plan used by students living in dorms.
  • However, the services available go far beyond what you might find in most condo buildings. People can also take advantage of a beauty salon and spa, play a couple of rounds in a golf simulator, or engage in some mental stimulation in the brain fitness centre. Housekeeping is provided weekly, with medical staff on call around the clock. Medical treatments are delivered privately in the homes of residents, rather than requiring people to move to a hospital wing if they are ill.
  • "A lot of facilities come from a nursing or hospital style approach," explains Catherine Wallbank, vice-president of operations for Leisure Care. That firm manages Tapestry for developer Concert Properties. "We think about it from the hospitality perspective, and offering opportunities to enjoy life to the fullest."
  • It's an approach that suits 73-year-old Carol Byram and her 68-year-old husband Adrian. They purchased a home at Tapestry at Wesbrook after Adrian decided to return to school, and after Carol read a September 2010 Vancouver Sun profile of the project. After a long tech and entrepreneurial career in the U.S., Adrian is now working
  • toward a PhD in neuroethics at UBC. Carol is busy on the strata council and various committees for the building, as well as her work with Ballet BC "I tell people that living here is like being on a cruise ship or at the Four Seasons with all your friends," the former communications director for Sony Electronics says. "There is something to do all the time if you want to."
  • With isolation being a known hazard for seniors, Byram says she doesn't understand people who hang on to living in single-family homes until the bitter end. Activities at Tapestry include movie nights, day trips, fitness classes, and musical performances. She also says there is no shortage of people to go for a walk or meal with.
  • Byram enjoys being part of the larger community at UBC, saying there is a noticeable energy on campus as students stream in and out of classes. She volunteered to be a subject for a study examining the effects of companionship and exercise on aging. She is also involved in Project Chef, where students from a nearby elementary school come and cook with residents.
  • She often runs into her neighbours Yul and Joanne Kwon in the gym. Yul is 79, and Joanne is 77.
  • Yul has qualified to run the Boston Marathon next year, and is an adjunct professor of economics at SFU, after decades teaching at the University of Regina and a university in Australia. He tends to have his daughter accompany him on his longer runs through Pacific Spirit Park. "I am writing a book, so I am too busy to take advantage of all of these programs right now," he laughs. "But Joanne participates, and as time goes on, we appreciate that the events are available to us." They purchased their home three years ago at the urging of their son, and at the time, had no idea it was even a seniors residence. He and Carol agree that downsizing directly to Tapestry was the right choice to make, because of all of the amenities and the peace of mind offered by the staff.
Govind Rao

Aging population requires new health funding formula, Quebec Premier says - The Globe a... - 0 views

www.theglobeandmail.com/...article20246593

from heather federal election accord Quebec

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  • Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard is pushing his fellow premiers to adopt a new funding formula for health care transfer payments that would take into account a province’s aging population.The rookie federalist Premier is making his case behind closed doors at the Council of the Federation meeting in Charlottetown Thursday. He is hoping that his colleagues will accept his proposal and then lobby the federal government to change its formula, which many provinces argue punishes them for having an older population.
Govind Rao

Privatization: what it is, why it matters - Infomart - 0 views

www.fpinfomart.ca/...223358003

from heather NL privatization union

shared by Govind Rao on 23 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • The Telegram (St. John's) Tue Jun 23 2015
  • With oil prices down, an aging population and high unemployment, the conservative government of Newfoundland and Labrador is looking for a silver bullet to cut costs for public services and infrastructure. Their sights are settling on privatization to be that silver bullet. What is privatization? In its most narrow sense, privatization is the whole or partial sale of public services and/or infrastructure. It can include the sale of assets, functions or the entire institution.
  • With privatization, the service or infrastructure becomes funded and/or run by a private corporation. Privatization usually includes not only a change in ownership but also a change in the priorities, responsibilities and role of the state. Advocates of privatization offer free-market competition as the path to economic and social success, with promises of cost savings, lower risk, greater efficiency and more individual choice. Privatization takes several forms in Canada, including:
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  • ? full privatization: where a government enterprise is sold in full to private investors. ? publicly funded with services and management delivered privately, sometimes unknown to the consumer. ? public funding of private services: government provides vouchers to consumers for the purchase of goods and services from private providers.
  • ? public/private partnerships (P3s): full outside contracting, management and service delivery of traditionally delivered public services such as hospitals, roads, schools and prisons. This can include private finance, design, building, operation and possibly temporary ownership of an asset. Can privatization deliver? After decades of experimentation with privatization in different forms across Canada, the data is clear on the failure to deliver on its promises and the high cost society pays - multiple costs, not only in economic terms but also quality and access to services, quality and quantity of jobs, as well as transparency and accountability.
  • Public/private partnerships (P3s) are the fastest-growing model of privatization in Canada. The P3 models vary but all include the reliance on private sector borrowing to finance the development of public infrastructure projects in a long-term lease arrangement; it is effectively leasing rather than owning and sometimes that lease includes maintenance as well. P3s cost more. Governments have always been able to borrow money more cheaply than private corporations. According to a University of Toronto study of 28 P3 projects in Ontario, P3s cost, on average, 16 per cent more than a traditional public contract. A recent auditor general of Ontario report found that P3 projects cost the province $8 billion more than if they were done under the traditional model.
  • If they cost more, why do politicians promote them? Political expediency - in P3 lease agreements the debt stays off the books or is postponed for decades. P3s hide debt - which is a dream for politicians looking for easy wins in hard economic times. It is also ideological and it is about private sector lobbying and influence. Public services are a boon to private sector deliverers with guaranteed public payments and profit margins over the long term. Supporters of privatization claim that it leads to better pricing for the public as consumers. A comparison of privately owned Manitoba Telecom Services, privatized in 1997, to SaskTel, Saskatchewan's publicly owned telecommunications crown corporation shows this to not be true. Twenty years after privatization of MTS, the cost of a basic phone with SaskTel is $8 less per month than from MTS.
  • Private corporations demand a shroud of confidentiality in order to protect their competitive position. This means that privatization reduces both transparency and accountability. An example of this is the Ontario privatization of municipal water testing which has been linked to the May 2000 bacterial contamination of municipal water in Walkerton, Ont., led to the deaths of at least seven people and the serious illness of 2,300 more from water contaminated with E. coli. The absence of criteria governing quality of testing, and the lack of provisions made for notification of results to authorities contributed to the worst public health disaster involving municipal water in Canadian history.
  • Health care is a sector where there is huge pressure on government to control cost, particularly in Newfoundland and Labrador with the aging demographic. Private interests see great profit opportunities. But in health care, for-profit does not deliver. In Manitoba, living in a for-profit long-term care facility increased the odds of dying in hospital or being hospitalized.
  • In a metadata analysis of hospitals in the U.S., Dr. Philip Devereaux, a cardiologist at McMaster University, concluded that the death rate in for-profit hospitals was two per cent higher than in not-for-profit facilities. In Alberta, the Health Quality Council of Alberta's Long Term Care Family Experience Survey in 2012 found that, on average, private and volunteer operated facilities offered poorer quality in terms of staffing levels, care of residents' belongings, and assistance with daily living activities such as toileting, drinking and eating, than publicly operated ones.
  • The scathing Ontario auditor general report indicates that there needs to be extensive and comprehensive reviews of provincial privatization projects. Until proper cost-benefit analyses and public reviews and reform of private funding and procurement models occur, governments and public bodies should place moratoria on further public-private infrastructure contracts. The citizens pay either way, but they pay more in a privatized model - either as tax payers or out of pocket.
  • The government has alternatives. The Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Labour has published a number of reports and fact sheets on the progressive revenue options open to the provincial government. There are a variety of progressive revenue options open to municipalities as well. There are no silver bullets. It is time to stop stigmatizing government and public services and recognize them for what they are: the way we pool our resources to buy services cheaper, control costs, and maintain accountability for quality.
  • his should be a debate based on evidence, not ideology. Mary Shortall, president, Unifor Local 597
Govind Rao

Doctors face compulsory system to declare gifts and hospitality from drug companies | T... - 0 views

www.bmj.com/...bmj.h4617

from heather drugs pharmacare UK corporation

shared by Govind Rao on 28 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • BMJ 2015; 351 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h4617 (Published 26 August 2015) Cite this as: BMJ 2015;351:h4617
  • Adrian O’DowdAuthor affiliations
  • Doctors will be forced to declare any gifts or trips they have received from drug companies from next year, under new government plans.The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has said that he plans to extend the existing rules and regulations over gifts and hospitality in connection with the promotion of medicines to anyone able to supply or prescribe them.The government intends to introduce a new “sunshine rule”—which refers to shining a light on, or transparency over, doctors’ dealings with the drug and medical device industries next year. The new rule means that NHS staff found to be abusing their position by taking extravagant gifts or hospitality and lobbying for unnecessary or overly expensive medicines or procedures would face serious action.NHS organisations will have to maintain a hospitality register where staff must declare gifts and hospitality that they receive from drug companies and medical device manufacturers. It will be the responsibility of NHS organisations, such as hospitals and clinical commissioning groups, …
Govind Rao

Sewage backups plague children's hospital - Infomart - 0 views

www.fpinfomart.ca/doc/doc_display.php?key=pr|246243|kldn|20150828|228060408

from heather p3 hospital quebec quality

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  • The Kirkland Lake Northern News Fri Aug 28 2015
  • MONTREAL -- Black sewer water that "smells worse than rotten fish" is backing up drains and pooling in bathrooms at the new Montreal Children's Hospital that was the focus of a multimillion dollar fraud investigation. The plumbing problems are the latest in a series of glitches -- as many as 14,000 -- that continue to plague the $1.3-billion superhospital of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC).
  • "There have been at least a dozen incidents where the following has happened, as high as the ninth floor," said a source at the MUHC, who declined to have his or her name published for fear of reprisals. "There are small drains on the floors of every bathroom. Many have spontaneously started overflowing onto the floor with sewer water that smells worse than rotten fish. This has happened in patients' rooms, in staff bathrooms, all over. One nurse was in the staff bathroom washing her hands one night and felt her feet wet. She looked down and they were in sewer water.
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  • "Management keeps bringing in the plumbers to snake the drains, but the problem keeps coming back again and again. This is very, very disruptive for patients and staff." The superhospital was built as a public-private partnership, with SNC-Lavalin winning the contract in 2010 after a competition with a Spanish-led consortium.
  • Former SNC-Lavalin executives now face criminal charges alleging they made $22.5 million in bribes to former MUHC officials to win the contract. One of those was former CEO Arthur Porter, who died on June 30 in Panama. Quebec authorities last year obtained court orders to freeze Porter's luxury properties in the Caribbean, along with bank accounts around the world. They also froze assets belonging to Porter's one-time right-hand man, Yanaï Elbaz, and his brother, Yohann. But those seized properties were, collectively, worth about $17.5 million, leaving $5 million outstanding. Documents seen by the Montreal Gazette suggest $4 million of that was somewhere in Panama.
  • The MUHC has been at loggerheads with SNC-Lavalin over a wide range of "deficiencies" -- from faulty wiring to leaking ceilings -- since before the superhospital opened in the spring. The MUHC has, to date, spent more than $1.5 million in legal fees haggling with SNC-Lavalin. The sewer water backup problem appears to be confined to the new Montreal Children's part of the complex, which opened on May 24. On Tuesday afternoon, a reporter entered a public bathroom in the lobby of the Montreal Children's next to a bank of elevators and was immediately overcome by a noxious stench. The fumes were so overpowering that one could not stay in the bathroom for longer than a few seconds, enough time to take a picture of a central floor drain that was taped over with masking tape.
  • The door was not locked and no sign was posted warning people of the smell. "I know that a drain has overflowed in the (intensive-care unit) at the Children's at least once," the source said. "It has happened on the eighth floor at least five times in several different rooms. I have never seen black water come up from the drains in the old building." MUHC official Ian Popple acknowledged problems with the drains, but was unable to go into detail. Louis-Antoine Paquin, a spokesman for SNC-Lavalin, blamed the problem on patients or visitors stuffing too much paper or other objects into toilets, rather than something inherently wrong with the drains. "It really has to do with the use of the toilets themselves -- in other words, what people put in the toilets," Paquin said.
  • David Kellner, a master plumber, disputed SNC-Lavalin's explanation. "There's definitely a blockage further down in the main drain where the water is coming up and it's coming up into the floor drains," said Kellner, who has not worked at the superhospital. "One hundred per cent, it's a deeper problem." In April, MUHC officials said they had identified 3,000 deficiencies with the superhospital ranging from minor issues such as the wrong height of counters to more serious problems such as faulty wiring in operating rooms. The Montreal Gazette has since learned that other insider estimates put the total number at 14,000. The MUHC's health and safety department has instructed staff to document every medical accident that could be attributed, in part, to problems with the new facilities.
  • Illustration: • Montreal Gazette • A taped-over drain is pictured in the men's bathroom of the new Montreal Children's Hospital. The bathroom is one of several locations in the hospital where sewer water has backed up. The plumbing issues are just one of an estimated 14,000 issues at the new hospital.
Govind Rao

Barrette wants hospital sewage problem fixed ASAP - Infomart - 0 views

www.fpinfomart.ca/doc/doc_display.php?key=pr|246243|mtgz|20150828|228044650

from heather p3 hospital quebec quality

shared by Govind Rao on 28 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • Montreal Gazette Fri Aug 28 2015
  • Health Minister Gaétan Barrette is demanding that SNC-Lavalin repair a "major" problem of raw sewage backing up from floor drains at the new Montreal Children's Hospital, but said the malfunction does not call into question the public-private partnership that the government signed with the engineering firm. "It's major and it needs to be resolved ASAP," Joanne Beauvais, Barrette's press attaché, said in an interview on Thursday, hours after the Montreal Gazette reported that black sewer water was pooling in patient bathrooms at the facility in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.
  • Barrette insisted that the plumbing problem - the latest in a series of construction defects to plague the $1.3-billion superhospital of the McGill University Health Centre - has nothing to do with the nature of a public-private partnership. Under such a partnership, known as a PPP, the private consortium finances and builds a facility in the public sector, leasing it back to the government for at least 30 years. SNC-Lavalin is the lead partner in the consortium that built the MUHC superhospital, which includes the Montreal Children's.
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  • "I've never seen any construction or renovation projects ever in any field where on Day 1 there were not a few glitches, and those glitches are being corrected as we speak," Barrette told reporters in Saint-Georges, where the Liberal Party is holding a caucus meeting. "But obviously there are still a few problems to resolve and I'm confident that everything will be resolved during the next year, next months actually. It's not an issue about (a) PPP, the issue is about construction ... That's the way things happen when you build a building of such complexity."
  • Louis-Antoine Paquin, a spokesperson for SNCLavalin, issued a statement late Wednesday saying that "the overall problems with drains ... has been addressed over the last several weeks and is now largely under control. The drainage system issues are being resolved mainly through a better understanding and a better use by several users of new sanitary equipment, including toilets and macerators." (A macerator is a type of pump that breaks down waste solids into a slurry to prevent blockages in a drain.) In a couple of tweets Thursday afternoon, SNCLavalin also addressed a particular problem reported by the Montreal Gazette that a men's bathroom in the lobby of the Montreal Children's was reeking of noxious fumes and that its floor drain was taped over with masking tape. "The problem with the drain reported this morning was notified to our teams yesterday and addressed in the hours that ensued," the company tweeted.
  • "This particular issue was caused by a mechanical break in one of the urinals, not the drainage system." Since the superhospital opened on April 26, MUHC officials have confirmed a host of problems - from leaking ceilings to faulty wiring in the operating rooms.
  • SNC-Lavalin won the contract to build the superhospital in 2010, beating a Spanish-led consortium with extensive experience in building large hospitals. Three former SNC-Lavalin executives - including ex-CEO Pierre Duhaime - face criminal charges alleging that they made $22.5 million in bribes to win the contract. Since the superhospital opened, SNC-Lavalin has been seeking an additional $172 million from the Quebec government for a number of construction "extras," despite the fact that the purpose of the PPP was to avoid any cost overruns. Beauvais said the government is continuing its negotiations with SNCLavalin.
  • Those negotiations were supposed to be concluded in June. Barrette has maintained that the government won't pay "a penny more" than what was agreed to in the PPP. Caroline Plante of the Montreal Gazette contributed to this report aderfel@montrealgazette. com twitter.com/Aaron_Derfel
Govind Rao

Cancer hospital ok'd - again - and the ndp's real test begins - Infomart - 0 views

www.fpinfomart.ca/doc/doc_display.php?key=pr|246243|cahr|20150709|224481346

from heather Alberta hospital rural

shared by Govind Rao on 09 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • Calgary Herald Thu Jul 9 2015
  • The approval of a full-service cancer hospital at the Foothills Hospital site - a massive fiveyear enterprise - is a victory for the NDP in Calgary, and an even bigger one for patients. Premier Rachel Notley and her health minister, Sarah Hoffman, delivered on their promise to reverse the Prentice government's appalling decision to cancel a hospital 12 years in the planning. For a while there, the NDP had us wondering. Notley said she liked the Foothills site, but they had to consider, they had to be sure.
  • After so many years of PC stalling, that raised doubts. But now the NDP has given the green light only six weeks after taking office. This will allow the plans to be finalized and the first funds to be approved in the fall budget. Construction should begin next year. At the deepest level, this is about patients, and suffering, and proper health care, not about politics or economics. Hoffman said it Wednesday - it has to be done for the sake of patients, no matter whether oil prices are high or low. Every cancer doctor in southern Alberta knows that a genuine crisis is brewing in southern Alberta cancer care. The small, outdated Tom Baker Cancer Centre simply isn't big enough, and that forces patients into external sites around the city.
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  • There were many cries of outrage, but the most powerful came from John Osler, whose family has deep ties to the Progressive Conservatives. His father, Jock Osler, was former prime minister Joe Clark's media boss more than 30 years ago. Osler said the PCs had flat-out broken their promise. The South Campus would not only be a "strip mall" hospital, it wouldn't even be cheaper. All the problems of the Foothills site - including traffic and parking - had been considered and solved, Osler said. On Wednesday, he sat beside the new NDP minister, looking like he'd just won the Foothills Hospital Home Lottery. Osler said Hoffman had called in several stakeholders on Monday. She and officials actually listened - a new experience for him. Dan Holinda, the Alberta executive director for the Canadian Cancer Society, had the same experience. "We've been fighting for this for 10 years, but we had to pound on the doors to get government to listen to us. We had to lobby and write letters and mobilize the community," Holinda said.
  • These patients aren't just Calgarians. They come from across the south. Then they're shuffled about like pieces in a medical chess game. Edmonton, meanwhile, has long had the superb Cross Cancer Institute, which is close to both the University of Alberta Hospital and the U of A campus itself. That kind of integration is essential for research, teaching and many kinds of secondary medical services that cancer patients need. The PCs promised Calgary the same, recognizing that only the Foothills site can meet all those requirements. Then they promised it again, and again. Just when the project was at last approved, ex-premier Jim Prentice strolled in and canned it, promising instead to build a smaller, cheaper centre at the South Health Campus.
  • But in this situation the minister (Hoffman) reached out to us. She brought us into a meeting this week. And it's the first time where I've had the experience that the government sat and listened." In one way, this was an easy win for the NDP. All they had to do was reverse a colossal PC mistake that symbolized how the old government had come to take Calgary for granted. But now, the real test for the New Democrats is in the doing. Surprisingly, they're still deciding where the new building will be - on the site of parking lot No. 1, which is directly in front of the Foothills entrance, or at parking lot No. 7, in the angle of 16th Avenue N.W. and 29th Street. The Tom Baker will stay in business for elements of cancer care. Some surgeries could be done in the Foothills itself. The new cancer hospital - as yet unnamed - won't be fully onestop, but somewhat scattered around the Foothills campus.
  • But it's the best option and it's out of the starting gate. We should hope the New Democrats get this hospital finished quickly, before they feel the slightest urge to mimic the government they replaced. Don Braid's column appears regularly in the Herald. dbraid@calgaryherald.com TIMELINE: TWISTS AND TURNS OF THE CANCER CENTRE December 2005: PC health minister Iris Evans announces Calgary could get $600 million to replace the Tom Baker Centre. March 2006: Premier Ralph Klein's government establishes a $500-million fund for screening and research. April 2007: Experts warn of a looming crisis after the proposed $900-million cancer facility left out of provincial budget. September 2007: Alberta Cancer Board expands operations at old Holy Cross Hospital due to a space shortage at Tom Baker. May 2008: Alberta Cancer Board explores private financing to build a proposed $1.1-billion facility.
  • April 2009: Budget constraints mean there's no money to replace the aging cancer facilities, says the province. March 2010: Premier Ed Stelmach says a new Calgary cancer centre is a priority after AHS says it's not on the government's capital projects list. March 2013: Premier Alison Redford announces plans to build a $1.3-billion cancer centre on the site of the Foothills Medical Centre. December 2014: In light of low oil prices, Premier Jim Prentice confirms construction of the cancer centre will be delayed. February 2015: The PC government explores different options for the centre, and consider South Health Campus as a new location. March 2015: The government announces the centre will move forward, but it may be located on two sites. July 2015: The NDP government announces the new cancer treatment centre will be built at the Foothills Medical Centre campus. Source: Herald archives
Govind Rao

Leaders want to turn anger into votes; With sway in 51 ridings, aboriginal communities ... - 0 views

www.fpinfomart.ca/doc/doc_display.php?key=pr|246471|tost|20150708|224411535

from heather federal election aboriginal

shared by Govind Rao on 08 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • Toronto Star Wed Jul 8 2015
  • Aboriginal leaders hope to harness a wave of First Nations outrage to push people to vote and sway the results of this fall's federal election. Despite historically low rates of election participation, Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde says there are 51 ridings across the country where aboriginal voters could play a key role. Nearly half of them are held by the ruling Conservatives, according to a list produced by the national aboriginal group. "Fifty-one ridings can make a difference between a majority and a minority government. People are starting to see that," Bellegarde told a general assembly of the AFN in Montreal.
  • "Show that our people count. Show that our people matter. Show that we can make a difference. Show that our issues will not be put to the side." Those who were in attendance say the recent findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission examining the legacy of residential schools, the continued push for an inquiry into the large numbers of missing and murdered aboriginal women, and a lingering feeling of empowerment from the 2012 Idle No More protests has spurred a new determination among aboriginals across the country.
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  • "I don't see how we can go another four years with this government, frankly. The past nine years have been disastrous in terms of us as First Nations accomplishing what we set out to do for our peoples. A lot of that has to do with the failure of First Nations policy in this country," said Ghislain Picard, the AFN's regional chief for Quebec and Labrador. Rarely has First Nations anger translated into such pragmatic talk, but aboriginal leaders will have to change a political culture that has traditionally shied away from involvement in federal and provincial politics with just three months left between now and the Oct. 19 election. "I know these are not our governments, but this is a strategic vote," said Grand Chief Patrick Madahbee of the Union of Ontario Indians, which represents 39 First Nations in the province.
  • Madahbee criticized Prime Minister Stephen Harper for signing trade deals that involve resources pulled from the land without the consultation or agreement of First Nations. But such complaints will receive little traction with federal parties if aboriginal people maintain their low-rates of election participation, he said. "The Indo-Canadians, the Chinese Canadians ... There's a whole number of groups that have learned that already. They have mobilized and they have influence. Right now we're being ignored." Bellegarde said the AFN is looking for politicians to implement the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, call an inquiry into the large numbers of missing and murdered aboriginal women and end a 20-year funding freeze for aboriginals that has contributed to problems with aboriginal health, housing and education that other Canadians never have to experience. "Invest in the fastest-growing segment of Canada's population, our young men and women. Invest now and there will be huge rates of return on investment in the future," Bellegarde said.
  • Both New Democratic Party Leader Tom Mulcair and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau spoke at the AFN meeting Monday and committed to improving the relationship between the federal government and aboriginal people. Both noted the fact that they had prominent and numerous aboriginal candidates who will be running for their parties in the next election. "Aboriginal Canadians have understood for 10 years now what happens when their voices are not heard by the political process, when they are written off as they are by this Harper government," said Trudeau.
  • It's a hopeful sign for Tyrone Souliere, of the Garden River First Nation in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., who has taken it upon himself to lobby chiefs and band councils to get their people registered to vote in the October election. Founded in frustration with the federal Conservative government, Souliere estimates there are some 30,000 eligible aboriginal voters in Ontario alone who could be harnessed to advance the cause of indigenous people in the coming election campaign. His efforts are focused on educating eligible voters about the issues and on what they steps they need to take to ensure they can cast a ballot in the election, following changed to the Elections Act that place higher standards on what can be used to confirm one's identity. "The only way to change how the government treats us is to change the government and to get that message to the politicians that there's a block of votes in Indian country and it will be available to the one party that will best represent treaty, charter and indigenous rights in Parliament," Souliere said.
  • "That's the goal." What the leaders say Tom Mulcair promises: Every government decision will be reviewed by a cabinet committee to ensure they respect federal responsibilities toward aboriginal people. Increasing federal funding for aboriginal education so that it rivals that spent on non-aboriginal children in Canada. Federal environmental assessments for resource development projects will become more rigorous. Justin Trudeau promises
  • There will be a legislative review that scraps or amends laws dealing with aboriginals that are deemed to be a violation of a section of the Constitution that affirms aboriginal rights. A guaranteed annual meeting between the prime minister and First Nations leaders. The 2-per-cent freeze on aboriginal funding will be lifted to make more money available of the likes of education, health and housing.
Govind Rao

South East LHIN's announcement of $21 million budget cuts to area hospitals will endang... - 0 views

www.ochu.on.ca/...lhins_cutback_announcement.php

from heather hospital cuts cupe Ontario campaign

shared by Govind Rao on 08 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • 04/September/2015
  • Toronto ON- “The announcement by the South East LHIN that it plans to cut hospital budgets in the region of the province that includes Brockville, Perth/Smith’s Falls, Kingston, Quinte, Picton, Trenton and Belleville by $16 to $21 million dollars is staggering and will ultimately endanger patient care” said Michael Hurley, President of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions/CUPE. “This announcement comes on top of 4 years of budget cuts, which have reduced these hospitals budgets by 24% in real terms,” Hurley explained.
  • Hospital across the South East LHIN are cutting services in the face of a 5-year funding freeze imposed by the provincial Liberal government. An Ontario’s Auditor General report quotes studies which estimated that hospitals need a 5.8% increase in funding each year just to keep pace with the costs of drugs, medical technologies and doctors’ salaries which are rising faster than the general rate of inflation. The freeze has cut hospital budgets by 24% in real terms. Ontario hospitals were already the most efficient hospitals in the country with the fewest beds and staff and the shortest lengths of stay going into the budget freeze. Ontario spends $350 less per capita than any other province in Canada.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • We can predict that beds and services will close as a result of funding cuts of this magnitude. Access problems will intensify and quality of care will deteriorate further. Women and the elderly will be hit hardest. The hospital staff that we represent will plan a stiff resistance, including demonstrations, rallies, lobbying, advertising and public engagement,” said Hurley.
  • Ontario’s Liberals dropped the corporate income tax rate to one of the lowest in North America, and economists estimate that the province has lost nearly $20 billion in revenue. This drop in tax revenue triggered austerity in provincial expenditures including a 5-year funding freeze for Ontario hospitals, already the worst funded per capita in Canada. “ Ontario’s hospitals are the least expensive and most efficient in the country and they are starved of operating revenue. It’s time for the provincial government to reverse the deep cuts it has made in hospital budgets in Ontario. The announcement of budget cuts of $20,000,000 to hospitals in the South East LHIN is surely an indicator of how bad the situation has become,“ said Hurley.
Govind Rao

TPP: profits before patients | The Council of Canadians - 0 views

canadians.org/...tpp-profits-patients

from heather trade drugs pharmacare coc

shared by Govind Rao on 07 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • October 6, 2015
  • The news yesterday that the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations have concluded is one that should worry Canadians, especially in regards to the relationship between intellectual property rights (IP) and pharmaceuticals (the text of the TPP includes 29 chapters, only five of which are about trade). Even the likes of Paul Krugman have changed their tune and stated, “this is&nbsp;not a trade agreement. It’s about intellectual property and dispute settlement; the big beneficiaries are likely to be pharma companies and firms that want to sue governments.” Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz recently added that, “you will hear much about the importance of the TPP for 'free trade.' The reality is that this is an agreement to&nbsp;manage&nbsp;its members’ trade and investment relations – and to do so on behalf of each country’s most powerful business lobbies. Make no mistake: It is evident from the main outstanding issues, over which negotiators are still haggling, that the&nbsp;TPP is not about “free” trade.”
Govind Rao

Mississauga-Streetsville candidates stretch out their election legs at health care town... - 0 views

www.bramptonguardian.com/...-legs-at-health-care-town-hall

from heather Ontario federal election lobby

shared by Govind Rao on 01 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • MISSISSAUGA – The federal election is pencilled in for Oct. 19 and the public screening process of local candidates is underway. The Canadian Nurses Association (CNA), a nationwide organization for registered nurses, held a town hall at BraeBen Golf Course Saturday morning (May 30) to size up four Mississauga-Streetsville hopefuls.
Govind Rao

Michael Smyth: Lawsuit targets big pharma in firings of B.C. health ministry workers - 0 views

www.theprovince.com/...story.html

from heather bc pharmacare drug drugs fraud corporation

shared by Govind Rao on 24 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • By Michael Smyth, The Province June 23, 2015
  • Did big pharmaceutical companies play any role in the B.C. government’s decision to fire eight provincial drug researchers?That’s the possibility suggested in a lawsuit filed by one of the fired workers, Bill Warburton, who sued the government for defamation and breach of contract.
  • “That’s a lot of money for them — to have their drugs listed on the PharmaCare program,” Colleen Fuller, president of the watchdog group PharmaWatch Canada, told me Monday.“The industry has a lot more influence over public policy than it used to,” Fuller said. “They spend a lot of time lobbying to make sure their drugs are listed.”
Govind Rao

United Church calls on members to sign Medicare pledge - 0 views

www.mysask.com/...template.MAXIMIZE

from heather accord medicare campaign ally

shared by Govind Rao on 26 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • John Cotter, The Canadian Press Tue, 25 Mar 2014
  • EDMONTON - The United Church of Canada is asking its members to take a stand on the future of medicare.The church wants its members to sign a pledge to support a campaign by the Canadian Health Coalition, which is lobbying the federal government to sign a new agreement with the provinces to improve the public health system.Right Rev. Gary Paterson, moderator of the church, said Canadians shouldn't take medicare for granted."I am really concerned as a Christian and a church leader that health care is crucial for our population," Paterson said Tuesday in Edmonton.
Govind Rao

Amendments to Labour Relations Act a betrayal - CUPE NL | Canadian Union of Public Empl... - 0 views

cupe.ca/relations-act-betrayal-cupe-nl

from heather NL labour standards legislation

shared by Govind Rao on 04 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • St. John’s – CUPE NL President Wayne Lucas says changes to the province’s Labour Relations Act (LRA) are a capitulation to employers and the business lobby, and are totally uncalled&nbsp;for. Says Lucas, “The amendments include the shocking removal from the LRA of card-based certification, which has been in place without problem for the last two years. “Card-based certification is something that CUPE, as part of the NLFL (Federation of Labour), sought to achieve for years. It was accomplished after a lengthy process through the Strategic&nbsp;Partnership.
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