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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42<br />
<strong>Health</strong> systems in transition <strong>Canada</strong><br />
In Quebec, the Public <strong>Health</strong> Act of 2001 empowers the Minister of<br />
<strong>Health</strong> and Social Services to initiate intersectoral actions that reflect policies<br />
favourable to the health of the provincial population. The Act also requires<br />
that the legislative and regulatory proposals from all other departments and<br />
agencies in the Quebec Government be subjected to a mandatory health impact<br />
assessment. In Ontario, the provincial government is exploring a “health in all<br />
policy” approach that appears to have originated in Finland (Ståhl et al., 2006).<br />
This approach, if implemented, would embed a health equity assessment tool<br />
in the development of all policies in the Ontario Government (HCC, 2010b).<br />
While there have been a number of intersectoral health initiatives in <strong>Canada</strong>,<br />
few have set targets with clearly defined objectives within specified time<br />
frames. In addition, these initiatives have not generally been accompanied by<br />
a systematic evaluation of processes and outcomes. While these are features<br />
that the Canadian initiatives share with similar intersectoral initiatives in other<br />
countries (PHAC, 2008), there is an opportunity <strong>for</strong> more specific target setting<br />
and systematic evaluation in future intersectoral initiatives.<br />
2.7 <strong>Health</strong> in<strong>for</strong>mation management<br />
To support system-wide planning, provincial governments have invested in<br />
health ICT infrastructures with plans to create EHRs <strong>for</strong> all provincial residents.<br />
As befits its federal character, <strong>Canada</strong> has a plurality of in<strong>for</strong>mation systems in<br />
place <strong>for</strong> the collection, reporting and analysis of health data.<br />
2.7.1 Data and in<strong>for</strong>mation systems<br />
At the P/T level, governments have been collecting detailed administrative data<br />
since the introduction of universal hospital and medical insurance plans. At<br />
the federal level, Statistics <strong>Canada</strong> has been collecting population health data<br />
through both the national census taken every five years and large-sample health<br />
surveys, including the Canadian Community <strong>Health</strong> Survey (CCHS), a crosssectional<br />
patient self-report survey, and the Canadian <strong>Health</strong> Measures Survey<br />
(CHMS), a direct measure survey of the Canadian population. Statistics <strong>Canada</strong><br />
is governed by a legislative framework – the Statistics Act – that makes the<br />
provision of basic census data compulsory while protecting individual privacy<br />
and confidentiality. However, the Government of <strong>Canada</strong> decided, as of the 2011<br />
Census, to eliminate the compulsory long-<strong>for</strong>m census that had asked 20% of<br />
respondents additional health questions in favour of a voluntary survey.