How to fix Canada's broken health care

The three determinants of optimal health care are access, quality, and affordability. Prior to the pandemic, our resources in Canada were strained as we struggled to meet the demands of an aging population and lacked the infrastructure and resources to provide an integrated, efficient care model. We now look back to 2019 and for all the challenges health care faced, those were the good times compared to the further strains on health care as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Post-pandemic wait times for non-emergent care, surgical procedures, and specialist visits are even more excessively long and unreasonable. Emergency rooms remain overcrowded with hallway medicine due to a lack of beds. Health-care workers increasingly feel the effects of burnout, with less work satisfaction and never-ending demands on their time. The bureaucratic and administrative process has never been more of a challenge and a time-wasting frustration. Current plans to resolve these issues are yet again a bandaid applied to a deep wound.

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We need fewer administrative staff

Canada historically has had an inadequate number of hospital and ICU beds and low numbers of physicians and nurses. While physician numbers may superficially seem reasonable, many physicians work fewer hours than ever because of family obligations or a greater focus on quality of life. Physicians are seen by governments as cost centres driving up health care utilization and cost of care, rather than providing an essential service to patients whose health is something we value greatly.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ranks health care availability for 38 participating countries. In one of the metrics, Canada ranks 23rd in physicians per capita with only 2.8 practicing physicians per 1,000 people, similar to the U.S. but much lower than most European countries, especially those with universal care.¹ In another metric, we rank 10th in nurses per capita at 9.98/1,000. The ability to not restrict routine health care during the different waves of the pandemic required adequate ICU bed capacity. It is no surprise that Canada struggled greatly with only 12.9 ICU beds per 100,000 population compared to 25.8 for the U.S. and 33.9 for Germany.

Aetna Health reviewed the relative increase in U.S. physicians and health-care administrators between 1975 and 2010 and showed that physician numbers increased 150 percent—a rate in keeping with the increase in population.² During the same period, the number of health-care administrators increased by a whopping 3200 percent. While some of the increase was necessary due to the increasing complexity of care and many new regulatory requirements, it represented a huge increase in non-direct patient care costs and added layers of bureaucracy. A similar situation exists in Canada. Susan Martinuk in her book on Canada’s health care crisis³ noted that Germany, which has excellent health care, has one-tenth the number of health care administrators, one for every 15,454 citizens versus one for every 1,415 citizens here in Canada. It is hard to see how this large difference is justifiable.

Health-care spending

The amount of money spent on health care doesn’t always relate to better outcomes. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) estimated that U.S. health-care spending grew 9.7 percent in 2020, over the previous year, reaching $4.1 trillion, about 19.7 percent of GDP and $12,530 USD per person.⁴ The potential availability of excellent care is unevenly distributed. Health care spending for Black and Latino people was much lower than for White people, and this imbalance may partly account for poorer outcomes in lower-income individuals with less access to quality care. Thus despite high levels of spending the U.S. trails greatly in metrics such as infant mortality and life expectancy.

Canada now spends about 12.5 percent of GDP on health care,⁵ an amount similar to Germany and Switzerland. While we need to spend more in the future for greater access to quality care, it is also essential to better allocate how we spend it.

New paradigms of care

Canadians continue to view universal health care as a highly important and valued right. There are important short and long-term measures needed to fix and preserve universal health care. We need to reduce unnecessary visits, decrease bureaucracy, fix wait times, increase efficiency and increase access. This requires a shift towards a greater focus on supporting those providing direct patient care such as physicians, nurses, and nurse practitioners, and less on bureaucracy and administrative costs. In addition to training more nurses and physicians, we need to allow highly qualified foreign-trained physicians to have an easier path to active practice.

Canada already has models for private care, such as concierge services, that have not impacted universal care, as well as allowing direct payment for many uninsured services. Some additional private care will not be harmful. The long wait times for essential imaging tests can be reduced by supplemental insurance without depleting universal access to timely care.

Improving ambulatory care

As development director of a hospital-based imaging centre, I experienced firsthand the bureaucracy and extra cost associated with mandated hospital-grade ambulatory clinic and imaging space. Most ambulatory care should be provided in high quality, efficiently run, less expensive commercial space, either purpose-built or rented. This will reduce capital costs of construction and operating costs and improve the patient experience.

Develop dedicated specialty surgical centres

Current long wait times for many surgical procedures are due to a lack of allocated OR time and guaranteed scheduling. Hospital operating room time is limited and highly competitive. As a result, highly trained surgeons with large patient backlogs have confided to me that they sit idly by, unable to book procedures and operate efficiently because of this challenge. One important solution is the creation of dedicated surgical centres of excellence. A model already exists in Toronto for cataract operations.

The Kensington Eye Institute is an excellent example of a highly efficient, stand-alone, not-for-profit ophthalmology centre that provides state-of-the-art day surgery in an out-of-hospital setting. Such models would also work well for orthopedic and other surgeries that can be done as day surgery.

New care models can improve care & reduce cost

Reducing current hallway medicine is a problem that requires complex, innovative solutions. We can reduce hospital ER visits by greater availability of 24-hour urgent care clinics. Better triage of who needs to visit a hospital can be achieved by broader use of nurse practitioner telehealth calls, as well as the use of artificial intelligence-based decision making about which level of care is required. Such a program has already been developed by an Israeli company, Diagnostic Robotics.

A number of in-home care models have been developed primarily in the U.S. that can be trialed in Canada. Dispatch Health has a care model that sends emergency care trained teams to patients’ homes armed with mobile blood work labs, IV fluids, nebulizers, and much of the other equipment found in ERs that are used to treat patients. Tufts Medical Center in Boston has partnered with Medically Home to test hospital-level acute care in patients’ homes. The Mayo Clinic has an Advanced Care at Home program that provides 24/7 access to a care team of physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants as required. At-home equipment includes a telephone connecting directly to your care team, a personal emergency response bracelet, vital sign monitoring devices, internet connectivity and mobile imaging testing, and at-home IV services.

Such in-home care can potentially reduce admissions to the hospital, as well as allow for earlier discharge, shortening the length of stay and reducing high in-hospital costs.

Improve access to care for under-serviced areas.

A hub and spoke model⁶ can bring integrated care teams to remote areas. This can be achieved by increased virtual care, locally-based nurse practitioners, and increased use of telemedicine via secure smartphone links. Mobile health teams can also visit periodically to provide required in-person specialized care or determine the need to transfer care to an urban area.

In summary, high-quality universal health care can be preserved with extra funding targeted to those providing direct patient contact and the use of cost-saving innovation. We need to develop integrated care teams that reduce the need for emergency and in-hospital care. We also need to use hybrid in-person and virtual care models that can broaden ambulatory care, making it more efficient for everyone and also more accessible to remote areas. Models for much of this already exist and we can leverage existing experience to meet our needs. We need governments and health care organizations that are finally willing to walk the walk not just talk the talk.