Canada - World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe
Canada - World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe
Canada - World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe
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148<br />
<strong>Health</strong> systems in transition <strong>Canada</strong><br />
poses a challenge to Canadian Governments that have focused on improving<br />
the timeliness, quality and safety of health care. Recently, there have been<br />
improvements in quality outcomes as well as reductions in waiting times.<br />
As <strong>for</strong> health expenditure, <strong>Canada</strong> is almost identical to other OECD<br />
countries in terms of its recent experience, although the precise sources of<br />
cost pressures may vary. One of the most important recent cost drivers is<br />
health sector inflation, due mainly to recent increases in physician and nurse<br />
remuneration, as well as payments to other health care workers (CIHI, 2011b).<br />
This has been accompanied by a major increase in the utilization of prescription<br />
drugs.<br />
Overall, there has been a major reinvestment in public health care in <strong>Canada</strong><br />
since the budget cutting of the early to mid-1990s. This has resulted in more<br />
doctors and nurses as well as an increase in the proportion of both relative to the<br />
general population. In addition, governments have invested heavily in capital<br />
infrastructure including medical equipment. In terms of imaging technologies<br />
such as CT and MRI scanners, <strong>Canada</strong> ranks average or higher than average<br />
among its OECD comparators. In a sense, Canadians have come full circle,<br />
from feast in the 1980s, to famine in the 1990s, and back to feast in the 2000s.<br />
The results of setting health re<strong>for</strong>m priorities through F/P/T agreements have<br />
been mixed to poor. The decision by the federal government not to participate<br />
in future first minister meetings is in part a judgement on the lack of success<br />
in the past as well as a political view that the federal government should not be<br />
involved in an area that is within the primary constitutional jurisdiction of the<br />
provinces. With most governments in <strong>Canada</strong> running budget deficits, the lack<br />
of discussion between the two orders of government reduces the possibility of<br />
reaching a pan-Canadian consensus on health priorities in the years to come.<br />
As a consequence, innovation is more likely to come from individual provinces<br />
and territories in a more constrained fiscal environment than the one that<br />
governments in <strong>Canada</strong> enjoyed during the past decade.