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Bringing about a higher level of transparency and accountability in provincial and federal governments to help protect taxpayers from abuse

Bringing about a higher level of transparency and accountability in provincial and federal governments to help protect taxpayers from abuse.

KPMG to look for ‘waste, inefficiency’ in Manitoba’s health-care system

The consulting firm KPMG LLP has been awarded a government contract to find ways to eliminate waste in Manitoba’s health care system and improve its efficiency and responsiveness.

The province says the government, regional health authorities, Diagnostic Services of Manitoba, Cancer Care Manitoba and the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba will be included in the Health Care Sustainability and Innovation Review.

Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen says the firm will look at whether services are being provided at a reasonable cost, if they’re producing good results and if expectations are being met.

He says in a release that the review — which was promised by the Progressive Conservatives several months ago — is timely in light of pending cuts to the Canada Health Transfer.

Goertzen also wants a first ministers meeting with the prime minister to discuss what he calls a long-term, predictable and flexible funding mechanism for health care.

Source: http://www.canadianbusiness.com/business-news/kpmg-to-look-for-waste-inefficiency-in-manitobas-health-care-system/

Detroit Home Health Owner To Serve 30 Years for $33 Million Scam

The owner of four Detroit area-based home health companies was sentenced to 30 years behind bars for a $33 million Medicare fraud scheme he played a role in.

Zafar Mehmood, owner of Access Care Home Care Inc., Patient Care Home Care Inc., Hands on Healing Home Care Inc. and All State Home Care Inc., was involved in a Medicare scam that took place from 2006 through 2011, according to the Department of Justice.

Mehmood was convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud, four counts of health care fraud, one count of conspiracy to pay and receive health care kickbacks, one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, two counts of money laundering and two counts of obstruction of justice, court documents show.

Through this scheme, Mehmood obtained patients by paying cash kickbacks to recruiters, who then paid cash to patients to convince them to sign up for home health care with Mehmood’s companies. Mehmood also paid kickbacks to physicians to refer patients to his companies for unnecessary home health care services, the evidence in court showed.

Along with co-conspirators, Mehmood falsified records to make it appear that patients were qualified to receive certain services that Medicare paid over $33 million for during the six years the conspiracy took place.

Source: http://homehealthcarenews.com/2016/10/detroit-home-health-owner-to-serve-30-years-for-33-million-scam/

Consulting firm hired to conduct health care review

The consulting firm KPMG LLP has been awarded a government contract to find ways to eliminate waste in Manitoba’s health care system and improve its efficiency and responsiveness.

The province says the government, regional health authorities, Diagnostic Services of Manitoba, Cancer Care Manitoba and the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba will be included in the Health Care Sustainability and Innovation Review.

Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen says the firm will look at whether services are being provided at a reasonable cost, if they’re producing good results and if expectations are being met.

He says in a release that the review — which was promised by the Progressive Conservatives several months ago — is timely in light of pending cuts to the Canada Health Transfer.

Goertzen also wants a first ministers meeting with the prime minister to discuss what he calls a long-term, predictable and flexible funding mechanism for health care.

Source: http://www.winnipegsun.com/2016/11/01/consulting-firm-hired-to-conduct-health-care-review

Focus on innovation, not more cash, to improve health care in Canada: doctor

Squabbling by provinces in the run-up to a new health accord points to the need for an agency that would share regional health-care innovations with the rest of the country, says an editorial in Canada’s premier medical journal.

Dr. Matthew Stanbrook, deputy editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), made the case in an editorial published Monday, saying spats over money and self interest could end in failed negotiations with the federal government, which must fund the proposed agency.

“A temporary tinkering with the health system, without a wholesale system change, will not deliver the health-care improvements Canadians need,” he wrote.

Much of the friction at a meeting of federal, provincial and territorial health ministers in Toronto two weeks ago stemmed from the Liberal government’s plan to adopt the former Conservative government’s decision to slash the six per cent funding increase to three per cent in a new health accord starting next April.

Stanbrook said innovation is the key to changing a health-care system that can’t be sustained as costs soar without better outcomes, especially for groups including seniors, indigenous peoples and the mentally ill.

Source: http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/focus-on-innovation-not-more-cash-to-improve-health-care-in-canada-doctor-1.3139392

ADHD: A Destructive Psychiatric Hoax

Earlier this year, Alan Schwarz, an investigative reporter for the New York Times, published his latest book: ADHD Nation.

The blurb on the jacket states:

“More than 1 in 7 American children get diagnosed with ADHD—three times what experts have said is appropriate—meaning that millions of kids are misdiagnosed and taking medications such as Adderall or Concerta for a psychiatric condition they probably do not have.  The numbers rise every year.  And still, many experts and drug companies deny any cause for concern.  In fact, they say that adults and the rest of the world should embrace ADHD and that its medications will transform their lives.

In ADHD Nation, Alan Schwarz examines the roots and the rise of this cultural and medical phenomenon: The father of ADHD, Dr. Keith Conners, spends fifty years advocating drugs like Ritalin before realizing his role in what he now calls ‘a national disaster of dangerous proportions’; a troubled young girl and a studious teenage boy get entangled in the growing ADHD machine and take medications that backfire horribly; and Big Pharma egregiously over-promotes the disorder and earns billions from the mishandling of children (and now adults).”

Source: https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/10/adhd-destructive-psychiatric-hoax/

Who wants legal marijuana? Not so many Canadians as once thought, survey finds

A large majority of Canadians wants marijuana to be legalized and made available for sale to every adult in the country, regardless of medical need. Right?

Maybe not. A new survey conducted by a major financial advisory company and obtained by the National Post ahead of its release casts some doubt on that piece of conventional wisdom. Deloitte LLP surveyed 5,000 Canadians 19 years and older this summer and found that only 40 per cent favour marijuana legalization, with almost as many opposed, throwing shade on one of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s key campaign promises from the 2015 federal election.

In B.C., the province most closely associated with pot production and consumption, 42 per cent of people surveyed were in favour of legalization, with 33 per cent opposed. Next door in Alberta, more people were actually opposed to legalization than in favour of it. In Ontario, 40 per cent were in favour with 36 per cent opposed, while Quebeckers were almost evenly divided.

The Deloitte findings seem at odds with results from similar but smaller surveys conducted earlier this year by other firms, when as many as 75 per cent of respondents nationwide said they supported legalization.

The latest survey comes just ahead of a final report from the federal Task Force on Marijuana Legalization and Regulation, to be delivered next month to Trudeau and his cabinet. Chaired by former Liberal cabinet minister Anne McLellan, the nine-person task force is meant to “provide advice for the design of a new legislative and regulatory framework” for recreational pot.

Source: http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/who-wants-legal-marijuana-not-so-many-canadians-as-once-thought-survey-finds

Nurses who kill: There’ve been more of them than you might think. And there could be thousands of victims

Some claimed they did it for the good of their patients, others created scenarios where they could try to heroically save a life, and some just seemed to enjoy the power to inflict sudden death.

The multiple murder charges laid against a Woodstock, Ont., nurse Tuesday may have shocked many Canadians, but the case was hardly unique.

Across North America and Europe, dozens of nurses and other health-care workers have been accused of deliberately killing patients, usually with medications meant to make their charges better.

By one academic’s estimate, health-care criminals have been convicted of killing at least 328 people, while close to another 2,000 suspicious deaths have been linked less definitively to those medical murderers.

“It’s relatively rare in terms of murder and serial murder,” David Wilson, a criminology professor at Birmingham City University in Britain, said Tuesday. “(But) it’s just that it’s so shocking, because clearly these are people to whom we entrust our families, our loved ones.”

Many have noticeable personality or psychiatric problems that are missed because health-care administrators desperate for more nurses often fail to check references, he said.

Source: http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/cases-of-patients-being-killed-by-health-care-workers-may-be-shocking-but-arent-unusual

Quebec to spend surplus on eliminating health tax

Quebec’s finance minister says the province finally has its debt under control and so can now afford to spend $2.2 billion over the next three years on infrastructure, healthcare, and education.

In a mid-fiscal-year budget update on Tuesday, Carlos Leitao said the provincial government is now in a position to eliminate the health tax for all Quebecers on Jan. 1, 2017, two years ahead of schedule.

Leitao had promised in March 2015 to begin wiping out the health tax for low-income Quebecers in 2017, and to eliminate it for everyone in 2019.

This will cost the provincial government $179 million in the current fiscal year.

“Now that our house is in order, we have the means to change things to improve the lives of Quebecers,” said Leitao, who, in addition to spending more on healthcare and education, also wants to take measures to improve the economy in rural Quebec.

Leitao said it’s all a sign that steady, patient work and so-called austerity measures have been effective.

Source: http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-to-spend-surplus-on-eliminating-health-tax-1.3130592

One in 18 Canadian patients suffer from preventable hospital errors, report finds

Pretty well everyone has heard a horror story about a serious hospital mishap: a medication mix-up, a sponge or retractor left in a patient after surgery, the wrong kidney removed.

So it would be no surprise if some patients facing an operation or admission to a medical ward may be somewhat anxious about their care.

And that begs the question: just how safe are Canada’s hospitals?

As it turns out, 138,000 — or one in every 18 — patients admitted to a Canadian hospital in 2014-15 suffered some kind of harmful event that could potentially have been prevented, from getting the wrong drug to developing an infection, a report released Wednesday has found.

Of those 138,000 patients, about 30,000 had more than one adverse event that compromised their care.

“We know that most patients experience safe care, but when harm happens there’s a big impact on patients, families and the health team,” said Kathleen Morris, vice-president of research and analysis at the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), which compiled the report.

Source: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/10/26/one-in-18-canadians-suffer-from-preventable-hospital-errors-report-finds.html

Shoppers Drug Mart, Canada’s largest pharmacy chain, applies for medical marijuana license

Obtaining medical marijuana in Canada could soon be as easy as strolling into the neighborhood pharmacy. Shoppers Drug Mart, the nation’s largest drug store chain, has asked the government for permission to dispense pot to patients, it said Tuesday.

“We have applied to be a licensed producer strictly for the purposes of distributing medical marijuana,” Tammy Smitham, the vice president of external communication for Loblaw and Shoppers Drug Mart, said in a statement Tuesday.

“We have applied to be a licensed producer strictly for the purposes of distributing medical marijuana,” Tammy Smitham, the vice president of external communication for Loblaw and Shoppers Drug Mart, said in a statement Tuesday.

More than 75,000 Canadians participate in the national government’s medical marijuana program as of June 30, but current law only allows patients to obtain their prescriptions from licensed producers through the mail. With legislative changes likely to occur across the board in the couple years, however, Shoppers has begun laying the groundwork to potentially become Canada’s first legal coast-to-coast pot dispensary.

Shoppers doesn’t intend on growing its own weed, but wants to be considered a licensed producer by the government so its pharmacists can fill marijuana scripts like any other prescription handled at its 1,200-plus drug stores.

Source: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/25/shoppers-drug-mart-canadas-largest-pharmacy-chain-/