Canada - World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe

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