Ontario has started consultations on legislative changes which will see the creation of more specialty clinics - one of the elements of the Action Plan for Health Care announced in January 2012. The intent is to move low-risk ambulatory services from hospitals to community-based settings. These non-profit specialty clinics will operate as part of the Independent Health Facility (IHF) program. There are over 1,000 IHFs in Ontario, most of which provide diagnostic services although some offer surgical or other medical procedures. The changes the government has in mind will see the new clinics, as well as all IHFs, come under the planning and funding umbrella of the 14 Local Health Integration Networks. Cancer Care Ontario will also be able to fund the clinics should they provide cancer-related services.

highlights the need to ensure an appropriate number of nurses and other staff is available at all times across the continuum of care, with a suitable mix of education, skills and experience to ensure that patient care needs are met and that hazard-free working conditions are maintained. "It is well known that nurse staffing affects the patient's length of stay in hospital, morbidity and mortality and their reintegration into the community," said Judith Shamian, President of the International Council of Nurses. "In addition, safe staffing levels are associated with improved retention, recruitment and workforce sustainability as well as better cost efficiency for the health care system - in short this is essential to the functioning of all health services."

Starting Sept. 3, pharmacists across the province will expand their role and provide a bundle of new services. Quebec's association of pharmacist owners (AQPP) is meeting with the Ministry of Health today to determine which of the services will be covered by medicare. Here's the run-down of tasks your pharmacist will be able to perform after Labour Day: Extend a prescription. Adjust a prescription. Switch one medication for its equivalent in case of a shortage. Administer medication to show a patient its proper usage. Prescribe and interpret laboratory analyses. Prescribe medication for a mild condition when the diagnostic is known. Prescribe medication when a diagnosis is not required.

Toronto Star Wed Aug 14 2013 A string of three disease outbreaks since 2010 at Scarborough long-term care home Bendale Acres caused five related deaths, a dozen hospitalizations and exposed 200 seniors to vomiting, dehydration and diarrhea. The cases are carefully detailed in Toronto Public Health inspection reports obtained through freedom of information. But they were never made public. That's because there is no mandatory public reporting of outbreaks in institutions beyond postings in the facilities themselves while the health threat is active. That should change, said Mansel Griffiths, director of the Canadian Research Institute for Food Safety and a professor in the department of food science at the University of Guelph.

Ingrid Torjesen Author Affiliations The majority of health professionals in the United States who sit on guideline panels deciding the definitions or diagnostic criteria for common conditions have financial ties to pharmaceutical and medical device companies, a study has found.1 The researchers identified 16 publications by national and international guideline panels that had been published between 2000 and 2013 on the diagnosis of 14 common conditions. Of these, 10 proposed changes widening diagnostic definitions, one narrowing definitions, and the impact of the other five was unclear. Conditions that had their definitions expanded included high blood pressure, Alzheimer's disease, and rheumatoid arthritis. Panels widened definitions …

Health Canada should regulate businesses that mix drugs outside of licensed pharmacies, recommends an expert who investigated why 1202 patients, including 40 children, in Ontario and New Brunswick received diluted chemotherapy drugs between February 2012 and March of this year. In the Ontario government-commissioned report, "A Review of the Oncology Under-Dosing Incident," Jake Thiessen, founding director of the School of Pharmacy at the University of Waterloo, Ont., makes 12 recommendations to clarify who regulates what and to improve the supply chain that hospitals use to procure drugs."The entire incident was preventable," he writes in the report.

The Telegram (St. John's) Sat Aug 10 2013 Page: A19 Section: Weekend Opinion Byline: Lana Payne Jim Flaherty, Stephen Harper's finance minister, has become a master storyteller. His latest tale, or at least the one his friends are spinning for him, is the deficit was caused by the great recession of 2009. Like every tale, there is a kernel of truth. This new version of history is necessary in order to perpetuate the falsehood that his government is a good manager of the economy. But this is not a deficit the government can blame on the great recession and the subsequent stimulus budget that followed. Rather, Canada's $18.7-billion deficit has it roots in failed economic policies, decisions made before the world financial crisis, including reckless corporate tax cuts. Remember, because the Conservatives would like us to forget, that this is a government that inherited $13 billion in surpluses. They quickly emptied the cupboard with one tax cut after another... We know that governments don't play hardball with big business. Indeed, our federal government saves all the hardball for the provinces. And the biggest piece of hardball is about to unfold over the next year as provinces tie themselves into knots trying to figure out how to pay for health care given the federal government edict. The current health accord ends in 2014 and Harper, with no consultations, has told the provinces to expect a lot less from Ottawa. After all, he has to pay for those corporate tax cuts. No money for health care, but lots for big business. Expect to be told that health care is unsustainable. That we can no longer afford it. Another big lie....

Musical beds between nursing homes inhumane, families say Quebec's Program 68 means seniors face up to three moves before permanent placement BY CHARLIE FIDELMAN, GAZETTE HEALTH REPORTER AUGUST 12, 2013 MONTREAL - Making the transition from a hospital ward to a nursing home can be an emotionally difficult experience for patients and their families. In Quebec, families must also grapple with a little-known side effect called "transfer trauma." That's because the procedure of having a patient admitted to a long-term care facility in Montreal's public health department ensures elderly patients are shuffled from residence to residence across the island of Montreal until a permanent bed in their nursing home of choice opens up. Distressed families say this process of musical beds is inhumane. "It's sad - any change now will be devastating to her to the point of no return," said Olga Harmazy, whose 89-year-old mother suffers confusion, memory loss and disorientation because of advanced Alzheimer's.

CompaniesandMarkets.com Mon Aug 12 2013, 2:11pm ET The North America home healthcare market was valued at $90.9 billion in 2012; it is poised to grow at a CAGR of 7.5% to reach $130.4 billion by 2017. Home healthcare market includes products, services, and telehealth. The home care product category comprises homecare testing, screening & monitoring devices, home healthcare therapeutic equipment, mobility assist & other devices, fitness, and nutrition products. Services include unskilled care, rehabilitation therapy, infusion therapy, and respiratory therapy, while telehealth includes home telehealth monitoring devices and telehealth services.

By Margot O'Neill, staff Updated Tue Jul 16, 2013 9:06am AEST Traumatised relatives have raised shocking claims that their loved ones were left to die unnecessarily or in great pain because of a critical lack of staff and training in nursing homes. The ABC's Lateline program has spoken to many people about their loved ones' experiences in nursing homes across Australia. Their complaints include relatives being left in faeces and urine, rough treatment, poor nutrition, inadequate pain relief, verbal abuse, and untreated broken bones and infections. And one woman has told the ABC that her grandmother, who survived Nazi concentration camps, believes her experiences in aged care are worse than her wartime ordeal.

Monday, 05 August 2013 PAUL BUCHHEIT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT Some of America's leading news analysts are beginning to recognize the fallacy of the "free market." Said Ted Koppel, "We are privatizing ourselves into one disaster after another." Fareed Zakaria admitted, "I am a big fan of the free market...But precisely because it is so powerful, in places where it doesn't work well, it can cause huge distortions." They're right. A little analysis reveals that privatization doesn't seem to work in any of the areas vital to the American public. Health Care Our private health care system is by far the most expensive system in the developed world. Forty-two percent of sick Americans skipped doctor's visits and/or medication purchases in 2011 because of excessive costs. The price of common surgeries is anywhere from three to ten times higher in the U.S. than in Great Britain, Canada, France, or Germany. Some of the documented tales: a $15,000 charge for lab tests for which a Medicare patient would have paid a few hundred dollars; an $8,000 special stress test for which Medicare would have paid $554; and a $60,000 gall bladder operation, which was covered for $2,000 under a private policy....

The Daily Gleaner (Fredericton) Fri Aug 9 2013 Page: A1 Section: A Byline: ADAM BOWIE bowie.adam@dailygleaner.com The Horizon Health Network will move to disposable surgical linens and customized surgical kits by the winter of 2014. For more than a year, union officials who represent health-care providers and allied health professionals from across the province have expressed concerns about a proposed plan to switch from reusable operating room linens to disposable one-off products in provincial hospitals, citing environmental impacts and potential job losses as negative factors. In that time, The Daily Gleaner submitted multiple requests for information to the Horizon Health Network about the proposal. Several times the newspaper was told that it was under consideration and that nobody from the province's largest regional health authority would be commenting on the nature of the planned changes. Now Horizon officials say the changes will happen late next year and they've outlined the reasons behind the push to transition to a new product. Margaret Melanson, the Horizon Health Network's executive director of the Saint John zone and chairwoman of the regional health authority's surgical committee, said hospitals in the Fredericton, Saint John and Miramichi zones will soon be making the change, noting facilities in the Moncton zone are already using disposable surgical linens. "These products would be used predominantly within the surgical areas, the operating rooms; however, also within labour and delivery suites, within clinics and ambulatory areas, where small, minor surgical procedures are performed, and other areas, such as interventional radiology," she said. for more email hfarrow@cupe.ca

August 9, 2013 Recent research has revealed widespread pharmaceutical influence and weak institutional safeguards in Canadian medical schools. But lecturers, medical students and ethicists are far from united on the extent to which relations with industry are acceptable and what role universities should play in preparing students to withstand influence. A July 4 study in PLoS One ranked the rigour of Canadian medical schools' 2011 conflict-of-interest policies. A simple conflict of interest would be gifts, where drug companies provide pens, prescription pads or lunches, while a more complex conflict of interest would be ghostwriting, where faculty members sign on as authors of studies conducted and written by pharmaceutical companies. Only 4 of 17 schools scored higher than 50% in the study's parameters. The study by Adrienne Shnier, a doctoral candidate in health policy and equity at York University in Toronto, Ontario, and colleagues also found that one school, the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, had no policy as of 2011.

Friday, August 9, 2013 Paying people for plasma in Canada has been a non-starter - But that may soon change. Canadian Plasma Resources hope to set up business in Ontario collecting human blood plasma. It's raised the ire of many in the medical world, but others say paying for plasma is not without precedence.