Healthcare

Dr. David Zitner, AIMS Fellow in Health Care Policy, and Brian Lee Crowley, AIMS President, have made a submission to the Commission on the Future of Health Care chaired by the Honourable Roy Romanow. The submission outlines the conflict of interest arising from government acting as health services insurer, as health care provider and as evaluator of health care delivery and suggests that these functions need to be separated. The authors also recommend that regulators require health organisations to collect and publicise valid and reliable information linking health outcomes to their activities, and also provide reliable information about access to care. They close with a discussion of the need to assess proposals to change health care by tying them to a testable estimate of how the new structures and processes will influence access to care or patient and/or population health.

Johan Hjertqvist explores the shift from public monopolies to market services. The success in Sweden of public policy experiments that have embraced the principles of competition and choice are driving a fundamental shift in opinion towards free choice, competition and diversity.

In this, his first commentary, Johan Hjertqvist explores the debate over private sector provision of health services in Sweden. He highlights the positive developments in primary care contracting and the continued shift to entrepreneurs over employees in the search for doctors and nurses.

Johan Hjertqvist explores the concepts of choice, competition and accountability to the consumer. The internet is being used as a tool in Sweden to maximize the return from the competitive supply of health services.

AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley addressed the Nova Scotia Association for Quality in Health Care describing the significant impact political and economic considerations have on the central decisions about the design and delivery of health care in Canada.