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A
national health council, one of the main planks in Roy Romanow’s
plan for revitalizing Canada’s health care system, has finally been
created, but the CMA warns the real work is just beginning.
“If the Health Council is to
meet expectations, it must ensure that it puts patients first,
particularly in overcoming the barriers Canadians face in accessing
the system,” said Dr. Dana Hanson, the CMA’s immediate past
president. He added that Canada’s doctors are ready to play “an
important part” in ensuring the council’s effectiveness.
The
26-member council, which will be chaired by economist
Michael Decter, includes five physicians who play a variety of
clinical, academic and administrative roles:
- Brian Postl, president and CEO of the Winnipeg Regional
Health Authority;
- Ian Bowmer, Memorial University dean of medicine;
- Robert McMurtry, former dean of medicine at the University
of Western Ontario;
- Thomas Ward, Nova Scotia’s deputy health minister;
- Les Vertesi, emergency physician, Vancouver.
“It’s a good mix of people,”
Hanson told the Globe and Mail Dec. 9. However, he also
sounded a note of caution: “This is a first step.”
Although it is unclear from the
framework released by Health Minister Anne McLellan what the
council’s initial goals will be, Romanow had foreseen three main
duties:
- establish common indicators and measure the health system’s
performance, and these measurements would form the basis of
annual reports to the public.
- tackle the issue of access to care by playing “a critical
role in data collection and analysis.”
- assess new technologies, which “should not be done in
isolation of their impact on all aspects of health and the
health care system.”
The $10-million-a-year Health
Council will have to skate over the thin ice covering jurisdictional
issues, since it is a federally appointed body and health care is a
provincial and territorial responsibility. McLellan says the council
is not meant to be a watchdog body — it will function more as a
surveillance system that reports back to Canadians on the quality of
care they are receiving.
Alberta is the only province
refusing outright to participate, citing the jurisdictional issue.
Quebec is not participating actively in the new body, but will
collaborate with it.
The CMA says it will be critical
that the new council lives up to the principles the association
proposed in its submission to Romanow 18 months ago: that it be
legitimate, independent, transparent, credible and permanent.
“It may not be a watchdog body,”
says Hanson, “but we will be watching it closely.” |
