March 27, 2012 - I was asked to review a paper called "Person-centered care training in long-term care settings: analysis of trainees' discourse on usefulness and facility of transfer into practice." The paper began by identifying the type of patient-centred care that is being taught in the training programs. It is called “Relationship Based Care†or RBC.
March 22, 2012 - From the Patients’ Association of Canada (PAC) we can do little but applaud yesterday’s publication by Cancer Care Ontario and Public Health Ontario of Taking Action to Prevent Chronic Disease: Recommendations for a Healthier Ontario. They have recognized that the great killers today are no longer the acute infectious diseases of yesteryear which were caused by identifiable microorganisms, but the slowly progressing chronic conditions which are affected by social and environmental factors.
March 7, 2012 - PAC’s visit to Kingston last week was a great success. We chose to visit Kingston General Hospital (KGH) because the hospital has dedicated itself to improving the patient experience through patient and family centred care. Members of our governance collaborative had a chance to meet each other and share ideas about how patients can become more active and effective as part of the decision making body in health care organizations.
Monday, March 5, 2012 | This article originally appeared here.
Engaging patients is the big new idea in health. Though it seems obvious that patients should be involved and actively taking part in their own care, medicare has been in trouble so long that this change is seen as a revolution.
On February 2, 2012, Dianne Carmichael spoke on BNN about private and public approaches to improving health care in Canada.
See the interview here!
February 17, 2012 - The Drummond Report recognizes that medical problems have shifted from acute (and often infectious) diseases to long term chronic conditions. Because the system remains dedicated to acute aspects of disease it has spawned a growing number of expert-based services and medical specialties that have fragmented the system and made it difficult to provide the continuity of care demanded by chronic conditions.
How Patients can Improve the Healthcare System
February 15, 2012 - Efforts have been made in eHealth to increase patient engagement and to allow physicians better access to patients’ healthcare information. Accessible and secure electronic health recording is at the core of these efforts. There has been some success, although much has to be accomplished before patients’ needs are met.
According to recent surveys, here are a few things that patients want to see:
February 10, 2012 - Yesterday I participated in a debate about the use of technology to drive down the cost of health care as part of Cancer Care Ontario’s Chief Information Officer Day. My partner was Irfan Dhalla, an internal medicine doctor from St. Michael’s Hospital. We were debating against Ed Brown, the CEO of the Ontario Telemedicine Network and Jeremy Theal, Director of Medical Informatics at North York General Hospital. Rudyard Griffiths was the very articulate and well practiced moderator.