Who said these words and when? We have three broad objectives: to develop a more community-based health care system to ensure that patients receive quality medical care as close to home as possible; that the procedures are carried out in a safe, effective manner; and to regulate facilities so that
Continue readingAuthor: False Postitive: for profit medical labs
False positive: private profit in Canada's health care: Government Incentives Build Empires
The American Medical News reports that Fitch, a global investment rating service, found that incentives paid to hospitals for adoption of electronic health records (EHR) went to increased profits. Fitch also concluded that: “…the hospital companies analyzed in the report are not expected to use their positive cash flow to
Continue readingFalse positive: private profit in Canada's health care: Medical Journal Kills For-Profit Lab Debate
I was surprised when the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) asked me to write an analysis piece on Canada’s medical laboratories. My book, False Positive, clearly lays out my position that for-profit labs have no place in our health care system, which is at odds with the close, and profitable,
Continue readingFalse positive: private profit in Canada's health care: Legal Abstractions and For-Profit Delivery
The categories we use to make sense of the world structure how we act. In his April 17th column Andre Picard, the health reporter for Toronto’s Globe and Mail newspaper, repeated one the most misleading justifications for more for-profit health care: most of the system is already private. After all,
Continue readingFalse positive: private profit in Canada's health care: Health Integration: Not in Ontario
I am sure there is a plan to improve health care. There must be: Ontario’s recent budget says it wants to improve integration, control costs and increase access. Yet Ontario’s provincial budget just does not do it. The section heading says “Providing the right care, at the right time, in
Continue readingFalse positive: private profit in Canada's health care: Ottawa’s Integrated Hospital Laboratory Service Takes the Next Step
The Ottawa Citizen announced the start of the Ottawa area hospitals integrated laboratory service. The Citizen somehow links this development to Don Drummond. It has nothing to do with Drummond. This particular project dates back to 1996, is fully within the public sector and continues a long tradition, back to
Continue readingFalse positive: private profit in Canada's health care: US Health Insurance Truths Emerge
As the American government slithers through the mud with the health insurance industry towards universal health coverage certain truths about private insurance that supporters of public health care know, and remarkably, pro-market advocates continue to deny, are emerging. Mark Bertolini, CEO Aetna Insurance, one of America’s largest health insurance companies,
Continue readingFalse positive: private profit in Canada's health care: Myth Busting Activity Based Funding
Activity Based Funding (ABF) is a benign sounding name for fee-for-service financing of hospitals and other health care organizations. It is usually advocated by fee market supporters as giving patients more choice and rejected by pubic health care proponents as the gateway to more private health care. The Canadian Health
Continue readingFalse positive: private profit in Canada's health care: Drummond and For-Profit Health Care
Considering the 1,500 dollars a day Don Drummond was paid and the research staff at his disposal you would figure that his analysis would be more subtle and better informed. It is not news that Don Drummond supports for-profit health care but his rationale is shockingly simplistic. The following is the
Continue readingFalse positive: private profit in Canada's health care: The Silo Strategy – Part Two
On January 31, in “The Silo Strategy: Part One,” I wrote about the exclusion of the for-profit laboratories from Ontario’s regional health authorities, the LHINs, and the negative effects of this exclusion on recent attempts in Wallaceburg, Thessalon and on St. Joseph Island to control laboratory costs and maintain local
Continue readingFalse positive: private profit in Canada's health care: Update on Thessalon and St. Joseph Island
The facts as we now know them: Despite what the hospital web site says there are no lab facilities at the Mathews Memorial Hospital or the Thessalon Hospital. Neither has a laboratory license. Blood is taken at these facilities by hospital staff and sent to the main lab at the
Continue readingFalse positive: private profit in Canada's health care: The Silo Strategy –Part 1
How did the for-profit labs become the sole providers of laboratory services for all non-hospital patients in Ontario? These patients, often called community patients, usually need a lab test that is ordered by their family doctor or a nurse practitioner. In Ontario multinational corporations have achieved a feat unparalleled in
Continue readingFalse positive: private profit in Canada's health care: LHINs Undercut Integration
Even though I have not met the CEO of the Sault Hospital in northern Ontario I expect he is an honorable person with a difficult task: to justify the unjustifiable. It is on his orders that the Thessalon Hospital and Mathew’s Memorial Hospital, small rural hospitals, closed their doors to the
Continue readingFalse positive: private profit in Canada's health care: No Legal Requirement to Cut Lab Services
Residents around Thessalon and on St. Joseph Island, both east of Sault St. Marie in northern Ontario, have been recently told that their community hospitals will no longer be taking blood samples ordered by their family doctors. This follows a trend across Ontario to force all non-hospital patients to use
Continue readingFalse positive: private profit in Canada's health care: Another Local Lab Service Lost
A column in the January 8 Sault Star documents a rural community losing its blood taking services. The Thessalon Hospital, serving Thessalon and area, a satellite hospital of Sault St. Marie Hospital, recently stopped taking blood samples from community patients. Residents in these areas must now drive an extra 85 kilometres
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