Sholom Glouberman's blog

The headline for the July 29th New York Times article read “Scientists Seek to Rein in Diagnoses of Cancer.” The accompanying article discusses the fact that many diagnoses of cancer are of conditions that, though pre-malignant or not life-threatening, are labelled as cancer and frighten patients into seeking “what may be unneeded and potentially harmful treatments.”

January 16, 2012 - I met with Katherine Smith last week to discuss her research into the dearth of policy effects of the British research into inequalities in health. The last fifteen years have been an exceptionally fertile time for inequalities in health research, but not for the policies that would reduce such inequalities. Katherine explored the issue and argued convincingly against the orthodox Canadian view that there are distinct policy and research communities that must be brought together through knowledge brokerage.

January 4, 2012 - An article in today’s edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) compares readmission rates of 5745 heart attack patients in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and 13 European countries. It concludes that patients in the U.S. are more likely to be readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of discharge than any of the others, specifically 14% of American patients versus 9% of all other patients were readmitted. The second strongest predictor of readmission after an acute heart episode was that the patient was in the United States.

January 2, 2012 - Today we received Health Care in Canada, 2011: A Focus on Seniors and Aging from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI). The report considers the health status of Canadians and recognizes the growing need to provide more ongoing support for people with chronic conditions. It declares that 48% of people aged 45-64 and 76% of people over 65 reported at least one chronic condition. “With increasing age the likelihood of having at least one chronic condition also increased” (19).

Access to health care was more closely correlated to the number of chronic conditions that people have than to age. And self-reported poor health status was similarly correlated with the number of chronic conditions. In 2009, 74% of seniors with only one chronic condition reported good self-perceived health, compared with only 27% of those with four or more” (19).

(As published in the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice January 2011)

Read this article to understand why "An Effective Patient Voice Needs Organizational Support" and "The Deeper Historical Reason for a Patients’ Association."

Here Sholom Glouberman expands on why the 1900s modern acute care hospital was so successful but why it now needs modernization.

Parts of this talk have been delivered to more than 3000 people at more than 20 venues during 2011.

This is the newest presentation offered from PAC. It distinguishes the type of care needed for acute diseases versus chronic conditions, why this matters, and why the patient perspective needs to be taken into account.