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Provincial health-care systems are struggling to place Canadians in the appropriate continuing-care settings they need, potentially adding to wait times and barriers to care, according to a new report.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) report found one in five seniors who have lower-priority needs could have delayed or even avoided admission to residential care and instead received care in their own home or in home-like settings.
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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.
As health ministers gather tomorrow, we’re again hearing about rising and “unstainable” public health care costs. Nonsense. In fact, Canadians’ public health care spending is going down.
According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), in real terms “since 2011, health spending has decreased by an average of 0.6% per year.” That’s a 5% total decrease.
Source: http://www.torontosun.com/2016/10/14/tom-parkin-unsustainable-health-care-nonsense