by Nathan Stall, Robert Bear & Terrence Sullivan AUGUST 8, 2013 Our health care system faces a disturbing paradox. While seniors represent the fastest growing age group in Canada, the country faces a growing deficiency of specialist physicians with expertise in caring for the elderly. But with seniors accounting for nearly half of all the country's hospitalizations and visiting their family physician twice as often as younger patients, almost all health care professionals will require competency in care of the older adult. This two part series will explore Canada's shortage of health care professionals with specialization and competency in caring for Canada's seniors. Part 1 will focus on physicians, while Part 2 will be released in early September and will focus on other health and social care professionals.

Posted: Aug 7, 2013 7:38 PM Alberta Health Services is investigating a privacy breach after an Edmonton home care patient received another person's health information in his file. John Grierson regularly gets a health report delivered to his house by CBI Home Health. Recently, his report contained information that he wasn't supposed to see - documents with another patient's personal information including their condition, treatment plan and health care number. "I was quite surprised," Grierson said. "I showed it to my wife who said, 'That's a disaster! You should get in touch with somebody about that.'" So Grierson contacted CBI Home Health and Alberta Health Services, which have since launched their own investigations.

Estimated $15.6 million spent on hospital visits for respiratory illnesses CBC News Posted: Aug 8, 2013 12:17 PM ET A new study says Inuit children's hospital admissions for respiratory illnesses such as RSV, pneumonia or bronchitis are costing Northern governments millions of dollars. The study was published this week in the International Journal of Circumpolar Health. In the Northwest Territories, less than four per cent of Inuit babies are hospitalized because of a lower respiratory tract infection. In Nunavut it's almost 25 per cent and in Nunavik, almost half of all babies are admitted to hospital. The Kitikmeot region had Nunavut's highest rate, with almost 40 per cent of babies admitted to the hospital. That's costly when many babies have to be medavaced out of their communities to a regional hospital or to hospitals in the south.

Health Canada should regulate hospital pharmacies, study finds Ontario wants College of Pharmacists to inspect, license hospital pharmacies The Canadian Press Posted: Aug 7, 2013 6:57 AM ET Last Updated: Aug 7, 2013 3:20 PM ET Health Canada should regulate all entities that mix drugs outside a licensed pharmacy, an expert that looked into the chemotherapy drug scare that rocked two provinces recommended Wednesday. It also urged Ontario to bring in stronger rules for licensed pharmacies, by inspecting and licensing those in the province's clinics and hospitals as well as pharmacies that prepare large volumes of drug mixtures. The recommendations come four months after it was discovered that 1,202 patients in Ontario and New Brunswick - including 40 children - received diluted chemo drugs, some for as long as a year.

The Globe and Mail Sat Aug 3 2013 According to their self-congratulatory communiqué, the "quality and sustainability of Canada's health care systems are being improved" by the efforts of the Premiers of the 13 provinces and territories. In the year since the Council of the Federation (the name given to the Premiers' confab) appointed a health-care innovation working group, it has "achieved a number of successes," according to the release. These include lowering the price of prescription drugs, reviewing the appropriateness of seniors care, and examining opportunities to expand the roles of paramedics and pharmacists. Let's give the Premiers credit for correctly identifying three key areas that need urgent attention in Canada's health system: improving access to and affordability of prescription drugs; bolstering the long-term care system; and creating some kind of coherent health human resources strategy so that we have the work force we need in the future.

Elderly home care client suddenly dropped by new provider CBC.CA News Fri Aug 2 2013, 11:59pm ET A 99-year-old Edmonton woman was unexpectedly dropped by Revera, the new home care provider she was assigned to just two weeks ago. Helen Pierce lives in her own home. On Thursday night a home care worker never showed up, according to her daughter Sharon Anderson. "At 6 o'clock she was supposed to get her medications. Nobody came,? Anderson said on Friday. ?I called Revera and they said 'Her case has been cancelled. We no longer have her case.?? Pierce only started receiving home care several months ago from an Edmonton-based agency. But that organization was dropped in a recent consolidation by Alberta Health Services so her case was taken over by Revera. Anderson says the transition has been ?a nightmare.?

B.C. care home battles norovirus after 9 deaths CBC.CA News Wed Jul 31 2013, 10:21pm ET Section: Canada The Victoria care home at the centre of a deadly norovirus outbreak has done all it can to prevent the spread of the disease, says the chief medical health officer for Vancouver Island. The deaths of nine elderly residents at the Selkirk Place care facility have been linked to the gastrointestinal virus since the outbreak started three weeks ago . The region's chief medical health officer Dr. Richard Stanwick has been working closely with the care home to manage the outbreak, which infected 100 patients and 50 staff.

by Jeremy Petch, Christopher Doig & Irfan Dhalla AUGUST 1, 2013 In the modern economy, many industries, such as aviation, retail and manufacturing, no longer slow down over weekends. Yet hospitals have mostly resisted this trend, even though demand for many forms of health care is no less on weekends than on weekdays. While most hospitals are open every day of the week, many operate with substantially reduced staffing levels on holidays and weekends. A typical internal medicine ward at a teaching hospital in Ontario, for example, might function with only one-third of the doctors on the weekend that it would have on a weekday. And the most senior of these doctors will have left the hospital by early afternoon. Allied health professionals (such as physiotherapists and dieticians) are often also absent on weekends, with only nurses staffed in numbers that are comparable to weekday staffing levels. It is understandable that health care professionals do not wish work over the weekend, but evidence points to a concerning "weekend effect" at hospitals: a small but meaningful increased risk of death associated with a hospital stay on a weekend versus a weekday. Is it time for hospitals to start staffing at the same level all week?

by Steve Morgan JULY 29, 2013 At a national health policy conference recently, Ontario's Health Minister Deb Matthews made a few notable comments. Among them was a request that policy experts applaud government officials when they do the right thing. Too often, good healthcare policy gets blocked by a very vocal minority of stakeholders. Minister Matthews also said that expanding prescription drug coverage would be a top priority for Ontario if the government had the money to do so. This is great news because my colleagues and I released a CD Howe Institute report on how to improve pharmacare in Canada on the same day she made those comments. Our report contains praise for Ontario. Ontario's system of prescription drug financing performs as well as or better than any other provincial system in Canada. But before celebrating that point too much, the report also shows that all of Canada's provincial pharmacare models have significant flaws not found in other countries with comparable healthcare systems.

Mortality rates correlate with income. Not surprising, but nice to have a statcan report that documents this.

Nice summary of the issues raised by the Federal Government's refusal to renegotiate the Health Accord.