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idea that preventive health care saves money is among the most ubiquitous and bipartisan health policy ideas out there.

What if we’re all wrong? What if prevention doesn’t save money?

“Prevention vs. Treatment,” a new book edited by Halley Faust, president-elect of the American College of Preventive Medicine, and Pacific Lutheran University’s Paul Menzel

Toronto Star Tue Dec 9 2014

The Liberal government scrambled Monday to reverse a proposal that would have resulted in thousands of children of low-income families being denied preventative dental health services. "Our government will ensure that no child will lose access to preventive dental services that they are currently eligible to receive," an email from Health Minister Eric Hoskins' office stated.

NDP MPP France Gélinas earlier in the day warned that because the Liberal government is proposing to slash income-based eligibility in half, some 15,000 children in Toronto alone will not have access to dental services. This number was supported in an August report from the Toronto Board of Health. "It is a partial victory," said Gélinas. "These are shocking and appalling cuts that strike at the heart of vital public-health services in our province," she told a news conference at Queen's Park in the morning.

The number of Canadians who die before age 75 from avoidable causes has dropped dramatically in the last 30 years, according to a sweeping new report.

due to advances in disease prevention and treatment and to social policy changes, such as traffic safety laws, that have cut down on avertable injuries.

The report, released Thursday by the Canadian Institute for Health Information, found rates of premature deaths have declined in almost every jurisdiction in the country

The number of Canadians dying early from potentially avoidable causes has plummeted over the past 30 years, but the gains made greatly depend on a person’s income and neighbourhood.

A significant portion of the decline is thanks to prevention and better treatment of heart disease.

Avoidable mortality from preventable causes dropped by 46 per cent, from 225 per 100,000 in 1979 to 119 per 100,000 in 2008. The shift reflects a societal move toward adopting healthier lifestyles, with fewer people smoking and more people paying attention to nutrition than 30 years ago, for instance. Other preventative measures could include vaccinations or seatbelt laws. Avoidable mortality from treatable causes declined by 56 per cent, explained by advances in screening, early detection and improved treatment of diseases.

On Thursday, a cross-party parliamentary committee agreed with Woelk, saying the patchwork system of end-of-life care must be replaced with a national palliative-care strategy.

The committee's nearly 200-page report recommends the federal government create a palliative-care secretariat that could ensure end-of-life care is available to anyone across the country.

Other nations, such as Georgia and Poland, have national strategies for end-of-life care, but not so in Canada, the report said.

Toronto Star Sun Sep 27 2015

The noose was a 54-inch shoelace. Fresh white, it was pulled out of an unworn New Balance running shoe, size 14. The knot was tied in a hospital room in the cold midnight hours of Feb. 24, 2013. Ken Coyne, a 68-year-old semi-paralyzed stroke victim, was somehow able to unthread the lace with only his left hand, tie the noose to the mechanical hoist above his wheelchair and hit the raise button to be slowly lifted to death - all while under 15-minute suicide watch.

A Star investigation that sampled almost half of Ontario's hospitals found that at least 96 in-patients have died by their own hand while under care since 2007. A further 760 were seriously harmed while attempting suicide in hospitals. Coyne's death was born of a system characterized by secrecy, inconsistency and lack of oversight, the Star found in a probe that looked into 70 hospitals, including the largest teaching facilities and major mental health centres in the province.

Starting on August 1, 2013, community-based physiotherapy, exercise classes and falls prevention services will be offered in more locations across Ontario. In total, 218,000 more people, mostly seniors, will benefit from the additional services.

Each Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) will receive funding to provide falls prevention and exercise classes for 68,000 more seniors across the province, benefitting 130,000 seniors in total.

Long-term care homes will receive $68.5 million in funding for physiotherapy and exercise directly.  All residents who have an assessed need for physiotherapy in their care plan will receive appropriate one-on-one physiotherapy to help them restore their mobility.

Simone Dahrouge, PhD⇓, William E. Hogg, MD MClSc, Grant Russell, MBBS PhD, Meltem Tuna, PhD, Robert Geneau, PhD, Laura K. Muldoon, MD, Elizabeth Kristjansson, PhD, John Fletcher, MD

No funding model was clearly associated with superior preventive care. Factors related to physician characteristics and practice structure were stronger predictors of performance. Practices with one or more female physicians, a smaller patient load and an electronic reminder system had superior prevention scores. Our findings raise questions about reform initiatives aimed at increasing patient numbers, but they support the adoption of information technology.

by Sophia Ikura, Christopher Doig & Andreas Laupacis (Show all posts by Sophia Ikura, Christopher Doig & Andreas Laupacis) February 6, 2014

Unions oppose mandatory vaccination policies

ONA representative Vicki McKenna

The government has wasted half a billion pounds stockpiling two anti-flu drugs that have not been proved to stop the spread of infection or to prevent people becoming seriously ill, according to a team of scientists who have analysed the full clinical trials data, obtained after a four-year fight.

But the Cochrane Collaboration, a group of independent scientists who investigate the effectiveness of medicines, says that the best Tamiflu can do is shorten a bout of flu by approximately half a day – from around seven to 6.3 days.

They also found worrying side-effects in people taking it to prevent flu, which had not been fully disclosed, including psychiatric and kidney problems. "There is no credible way these drugs could prevent a pandemic," said Carl Heneghan, professor of evidence-based medicine at Oxford University and one of the team. They are now calling for the WHO to review its advice to countries and for the UK government not to renew its stockpile when the drugs go out of date.

There’s an infection hospitals can nearly always prevent. Why don’t they?

by Sarah Kliff on July 9, 2015

Nora Boström died in a hospital room, her arms clenched around her mother’s neck, on November 22, 2013. It was 22 days before her fourth birthday.

Dec 21, 2015

Workplace violence is a serious hazard that many CUPE members face every day. In response to this hazard, the CUPE health and safety branch is pleased to announce our most recent resource, the updated Workplace Violence and Harassment Prevention Kit. 

Guelph Mercury Thu Oct 15 2015

It's time to tackle root causes of health inequities As Canadians, we are justifiably proud of our publicly funded health-care system. It is, arguably, the single-most powerful expression of our collective will as a nation to support each other. It recognizes that meeting shared needs and aspirations is the foundation on which prosperity and human development rests. We can all agree that failing to treat a broken leg can result in serious health problems and threats to a person's ability to function. Yet, we accept huge inequities in access to dental care and prescription drugs based on insurance coverage and income. Although the impacts can be just as significant, dental care isn't accessible like other types of health care, and many Canadians don't receive regular or even emergency dental care. Many others have no insurance coverage for urgently needed prescription medications and may delay or dilute required doses due to financial hardship.

Why is there such a difference in coverage? In short, dental care and pharmacare were not included within the original scope of Canada's national system of health insurance (medicare), and despite repeated evidence of the need to correct this oversight, is still not covered today. Instead, we are left with a patchwork of private employer-based benefits coverage, limited publicly funded programs, and significant out-of-pocket payments for many. Publicly funded dental programs for children and youth do exist for low-income families, including the dependents of those on social assistance. Most provinces and territories have some access to drug coverage, mostly for seniors and social assistance recipients, and there is some support for situations where drug costs are extremely high.

March 21, 2016

By Marieke Walsh

A national group says Nova Scotia’s ability to prevent and control infections is being put at risk with cuts to the province’s health department.Infection Prevention and Control Canada (IPAC) is an organization that promotes best practice in infection prevention and control.

As of June 30th refugees in Canada will be cut off access to treatment for chronic diseases including hypertension, angina, diabetes, high cholesterol, and lung disease.

“The changes are being justified using three flawed arguments. First, we are told that refugees are abusing our health care system. The reality is the exact opposite. Our challenge as physicians is to engage vulnerable people with the health care system, especially prevention and primary care, not turn them away. I have never met a refugee who came to Canada because they wanted better health care. In comparison to starvation, torture, and rape, getting vision care is never the motivation. Second, they say they are doing this for public safety. Actually, they are endangering public safety by denying basic health care services. People only pose a risk to the public if they are not properly engaged in health care. For example, if a person with tuberculosis is only offered care after they are spitting blood, they will have already infected others. Third, the Minister claims this is about saving taxpayers money. When you stop providing preventive care you wind up with repeated emergency room visits and preventable hospitalizations that cost a lot more money,” said Dr. Mark Tyndall, Head of Infectious Diseases at the Ottawa Hospital and Professor of Medicine at the University of Ottawa.

The Canadian Heath Coalition sees the cuts to refugee health care services as part of a broader pattern emerging from the recent federal budget. Other cuts that affect the health of vulnerable Canadians include: mental health services for soldiers at Petawawa; systematic spending cuts to aboriginal health programs; the elimination of Health Canada’s Bureau of Food Safety Assessment and food safety inspection at the CFIA.

In his latest book, Seeking Sickness (Greystone Books

what have the independent experts said about the value of the screening. The United States Preventive Services Task Force is one of them. The Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care, that's the Canadian equivalent. Most of the stuff you see about prevention is biased. For every one site like this funded by the taxpayer with largely no conflicts of interest, there's a hundred sites that will tell you other things.

there is often little evidence they actually extend lives and in some cases they are likely to lead to more harm than good

The bacteria is linked in hospital records to more than 30,000 deaths a year in the United States

William Jarvis, who spent 17 years heading the health care infection division at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "We know what to do (to lower rates). It's not rocket science. And we know the barrier is cost."

more than 9% of C. diff-related hospitalizations end in death — nearly five times the rate for other hospital stays

Pamela Fralick, President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Healthcare Association

I will therefore be speaking of home care as just one pillar of continuing care, which is interconnected with long-term care, palliative care and respite care.

The short-term acute community mental health home care services for individuals with mental health diagnoses are not currently included in the mandate of most home care programs. What ended up happening is that most jurisdictions flowed the funding to ministries or other government departments that provided services through established mental health organizations. There were few provinces — as a matter of fact, Saskatchewan being one of the unique ones — that actually flowed the services through home care.

our theme today is health and human resources

Dr. Andrew Padmos, Chief Executive Officer, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada

The first is to continue and augment investments in patient-centred medical education and training programs that support lifelong learning.

The number of deaths from adverse events in hospitals in the Netherlands has halved during a national five year programme to improve safety, show figures from the country’s latest survey of harm related to care.

The study found that the number of deaths related to failures in organisational or professional standards fell by just over half from 1960 in 2008 to 970 in 2011-12

The proportion of potentially preventable adverse events also fell over the same period, from 2.9% of all admissions in 2008 to 1.6% in 2011-12. Meanwhile, rates of adverse events in general caused by unforeseeable or unexpected complications remained static at about one in 14 patients.