The recent Chaoulli Supreme Court decision and health care proposals by Quebec and Alberta have led to renewed debate on how best to restructure the Canadian health care system. This volume offers a timely analysis of access and wait-times, alternative modes of health care delivery, and funding methods from the perspective of evidence-based policy making.

(John Deutsch Institute for the Study of Economic Policy)Queen's Univ., Kingston, Canada. Presents proceedings of a conference held at Queen's Univ., on November, 17-18, 2005. Covers health-care reform, drugs for rare diseases, issues in delivery of health care, and more. For public health personnel. Softcover, hardcover also available.

This book tells the story of how the Health Services Restructuring Commission developed a vision of an effective health services system for the twenty-first century and attempted to fill a policy and leadership void. (Midwest).

The recent Chaoulli Supreme Court decision and health care proposals by Quebec and Alberta have led to renewed debate on how best to restructure the Canadian health care system. This volume offers a timely analysis of access and wait-times, alternative modes of health care delivery, and funding methods from the perspective of evidence-based policy making.

Developed within the context of the expansion of the Canadian welfare state in the years following the Great Depression, the present organization of Canadian health care delivery is now in serious need of reform. This book documents the causes and effects of changes made in this century to Canada's health care policy. Particular emphasis is placed on the decades following 1940, the years in which Canada moved away from an individualistic entrepreneurial medical care system, first toward a collectivist biomedical model and then to a social model for health care.

Why has health care reform proved a stumbling block for provincial governments across Canada? What efforts have been made to improve a struggling system, and how have they succeeded or failed? In Paradigm Freeze, experts in the field answer these fundamental questions by examining and comparing six essential policy issues - regionalization, needs-based funding, alternative payment plans, privatization, waiting lists, and prescription drug coverage - in five provinces. Noting hundreds of recommendations from dozens of reports commissioned by provincial governments over the last quarter century - the great majority to little or no avail - the book focuses on careful diagnosis, rather than unplanned treatment, of the problem. Paradigm Freeze is based on thirty case studies of policy reform in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec, and Newfoundland and Labrador. The contributors assess the nature and extent of healthcare reform in Canada since the beginning of the 1990s. They account for the generally limited extent of reform that has occurred, and identify the factors associated with the relatively few cases of large reform. An insightful new perspective on a problem that has plagued Canadian governments for decades, Paradigm Freeze is an important addition to the field of health policy. Contributors include John Church (University of Alberta), Michael Ducie (Alberta Health and Wellness), Pierre-Gerlier Forest (Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation), Stephen Tomblin (Memorial University), Jeff Braun Jackson (Ontario Professional Firefighters Association, Burlington, ON), Marie-Pascale Pomey (Université de Montréal), John N. Lavis (McMaster University), Harvey Lazar (Queen's University), Elisabeth Martin (Université Laval),Tom McIntosh (University of Regina), Dianna Pasic (McMaster University), Neale Smith (University of British Columbia), and Michael G. Wilson (McMaster University).

The health care system in Canada is much-discussed in the international sphere, but often overlooked when it comes to its highly decentralized administration and regulation. Health Systems in Transition: Canada provides an objective description and analysis of the public, private, and mixed components that make up health care in Canada today including the federal, provincial, intergovernmental and regional dynamics within the public system. Gregory P. Marchildon’s study offers a statistical and visual description of the many facets of Canadian health care financing, administration, and service delivery, along with relevant comparisons to five other countries’ systems. This second edition includes a major update on health data and institutions, a new appendix of federal laws concerning select provincial and territorial Medicare legislation, and, for the first time, a comprehensive and searchable index. It also provides a more complete assessment of the Canadian health system based on financial protection, efficiency, equity, user experience, quality of care, and health outcomes. Balancing careful assessment, summary, and illustration, Health Systems in Transition: Canada is a thorough and illuminating look at one of the nation's most complex public policies and associated institutions.