Health Council of Canada. (2012). Progress Report 2012: Health care renewal in Canada. Retrieved from http://healthcouncilcanada.ca/tree/ProgressReport2012_FINAL_EN.pdf
Monitoring progress on the accords—the 2003 First Ministers’ Accord on Health Care Renewal1 and the 2004 10-Year Plan to Strengthen Health Care2—is a key element of the Health Council of Canada’s mandate. But the challenge is to determine how the commitments made in the accords have resulted in demonstrable change at the provincial and territorial levels. The accords did not, by and large, set out clear parameters for change, or the type of reporting that would be useful to the jurisdictions to measure such change. First Ministers did establish a series of comparable indicators for the provinces and territories to report on in 2004. However, their reporting only lasted a few years. Since then, the provinces and territories have developed their own indicators to address their respective planning needs. As a result, they do not consistently report on progress in the same manner, particularly in a comparable way that is useful to other governments and the public.
In this report, the Health Council of Canada provides an assessment of what has been accomplished to date in five priority areas. The Health Council searched government websites and health care stakeholder websites—such as Canada Health Infoway, the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), and Statistics Canada—as well as the websites of national organizations that report on specific aspects of health care or health care reform. To fill in many information gaps, the Health Council of Canada used a formal process for gathering information directly from provincial, territorial, and federal health ministries and departments, and consulted with experts in relevant fields. The Health Council’s approach provides an overall picture of how the accord commitments are being met. Specific information on each jurisdiction is provided in the Jurisdictional profiles on health care renewal.
In 2008’s Rekindling Reform, the Health Council of Canada reviewed and reported on progress resulting from the 2003 First Ministers’ Accord on Health Care Renewal.3 Last year, the Health Council of Canada released Progress Report 2011, a review of progress on both the health accords in the areas of wait times, pharmaceuticals management, electronic health records, teletriage, and health innovation.4,5 This 2012 report documents progress on home and community care, health human resources, telehealth, access to care in the North, and comparable health indicators. The report also showcases innovative practices to inform Canadians about promising efforts to improve their health care systems, and to facilitate consideration of how these efforts might be expanded or adapted in other provinces and territories.
