March 8, 2012
“What You Will Find In This Document:
Within the “Health Promotion and Population Health” resource list, you will find a variety of information from provincial, national and international sources on the topic population health. This resource list is organized into five sections: Overview, Documents, Organizational Links, Other Tools and Resources, and Funding Opportunities. A brief description of each section is included below:
- Overview provides a general description of the topics represented in this resource list.
- Documents is made up of toolkits and reports that are available online.
- Organizational Links lists relevant provincial, national and international groups affiliated with population health.
- Other Tools and Resources includes key websites, databases, and portals related to population health.
- Funding Opportunities is a list of organizations that provide financial assistance to organizations promoting health across the population.”
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Canada, Funding, Health planning | No Comments
February 15, 2012
“Ontarians want excellent public services from their government. The Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services understands and supports this desire. We see no reason why Ontario cannot have the best public services in the world — with the proviso that they must come at a cost Ontarians can afford. With such a goal, we face three overarching tasks. First, we must understand Ontario’s economic challenges and address them directly. Second, we must firmly establish a balanced fiscal position that can be sustained over the long term. And third, we must sharpen the efficiency of literally everything the government does so Ontarians get the greatest value for money from the taxes they pay. This report addresses these issues and offers a road map to a day when Ontarians can count on public services that are both excellent and affordable — the public services Ontarians want and deserve.”
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Canada, Forecasting, Funding | No Comments
December 13, 2011
“This sixth edition of Health at a Glance provides the latest comparable data on different aspects of the performance of health systems in OECD countries. It provides striking evidence of large variations across countries in the costs, activities and results of health systems… The indicators presented in this publication have been selected on the basis of their policy relevance and data availability and comparability. The data come mainly from official national statistics, unless otherwise indicated.”
This resource contains information on a number of topics, with the main content headings as follows:
- Health Status;
- Non-medical Determinants of Health;
- Health Workforce;
- Health Care Activities;
- Quality of Care;
- Access to Care;
- Health Expenditure and Financing, and;
- Long-term Care.
Click here to read the full article
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Access to care, Benchmarking, Funding, Quality of care, Statistics & numerical data | No Comments
September 14, 2011
“Shared service practices involve the integration of service activities across various areas of an organization, or across different organizations, into a single entity. The main purpose of shared services is to improve efficiencies and help manage costs. A shared service can be defined as “the concentration or consolidation of functions, activities, services or resources into one stand-alone unit. The one unit then becomes the provider to several other client units within the organization.”
Shared service practices are used in both the public and private sectors, and are more commonly seen in larger and more complex organizations. There are various shared service models that can be adopted, with each offering its own benefits and concerns. Governments in the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Ireland have successfully implemented shared service initiatives. In response to the increasing demands placed on health care funding, several Canadian jurisdictions, namely Ontario, British Columbia with Alberta as a partner, and New Brunswick, have introduced new approaches to coordinate and integrate the procurement of services and supplies required by their health care systems.
The intent of these “health shared service” models is to maximize the value of expenditures in health care through more efficient practices in the management of resources. The goal is to generate savings that can be reinvested into respective provincial health care systems.”
The UBC Centre for Health Care Management has offered two seminars on Shared Services. Visit Creating Value Through Shared Services or Patient Services Consolidation to learn more.
Click here to read the full article.
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Canada, Cost effectiveness, Funding, Integrated care, Patient-centered care | No Comments
April 22, 2011
This brief video provides one hospital’s approach to managing increasing costs while facing decreasing funding. The video presenter offers insight onto Lean implementation, performance management, and process improvement.
Watch the video..
Posted in Multimedia, READ Portal | Tagged with Efficiency, Funding, Process improvement | No Comments
April 11, 2011
Canadian governments are spending more on healthcare than ever. Driven by technological innovation, population aging, inflation and other factors, public healthcare expenditures are forecast to continue to increase, causing concern about the sustainability of Canada’s publicly funded systems. The hospital sector accounts for over 28% of total healthcare expenditures in Canada. Although this share has fallen considerably over the past few decades, hospitals continue to represent the largest single component of healthcare expenditures. Hospital expenditures are projected to exceed $55 billion in 2010.
Evidence suggests that provinces differ in terms of healthcare spending efficiency, which implies that there should be an opportunity for improvement. An often-cited source of inefficiency in the Canadian hospital sector is the reliance on ‘global budgets’ as the primary source of hospital funding. Global budgets can perpetuate inefficient care because they offer little incentive to reduce costs or foster innovation.
Based on a paper commissioned by CHSRF, this brief provides a summary of the available evidence on promising hospital funding options and their impact on the following goals: timely and equitable access, optimal volume of care, quality, efficiency and constraining future cost increases.
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Canada, Economics, Efficiency, Funding, Policy | No Comments
March 31, 2011
“Key messages
Canada’s publicly funded healthcare system is facing increasing cost control pressures. Hospitals alone represent a substantial burden on provincial health budgets, accounting for 28% of total costs. Presently, in the Canadian system, the primary source of funding for hospitals is through a global budget. Under this model, a fixed (global) amount of funding is distributed to each hospital to pay for all hospital-based services for a fixed period of time (commonly one year). Global budgets:
- Are based on historical spending, inflation, negotiations and politics in many provinces, rather than on the type and volume of services provided.
- Constrain hospital spending growth and create budgetary predictability; however, its consequences may be decreased services and increases in waiting times.
- Do not provide incentives to improve access, quality or efficiency of hospital care.
Funding hospitals on the basis of the type and volume of services they provide has become the international norm. Known as activity-based funding (ABF), these systems have been systematically supplementing global budgets in public and private insurance-based health systems around the world. ABF:
- Provides powerful financial incentives to stimulate productivity and efficiency: efficient hospitals retain the difference between the payment amount and the hospital’s actual cost of production.
- Is associated with higher volumes of hospital care, shorter lengths of stay, and yet has not been linked to poorer quality of care.
- Is linked to higher overall spending, due to higher volumes of patients being treated, and evidence of lower cost per admission is mixed.
Combining properties of ABF and global budgets may optimize the strengths of both global budgets and ABF. Many countries that have ABF to fund their hospital systems utilize a blend of global budgets to control spending, while instituting an ABF mechanism to create incentives for hospitals to provide timely and equitable access, appropriate volume of care, and efficient care.
In the Canadian context, recommendations are:
- Adopt population-based funding at the regional level to reduce historical funding inequities by recognizing differences in need across populations, regions and over time.
- Blend ABF and global budgets to create incentives for hospitals to improve hospital efficiency and access.
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Canada, Economics, Funding, Health care costs, Health care reform, Policy | No Comments
March 9, 2011
This synthesis and the concluding policy options represent a starting place for more in-depth exploration by CHSRF, and will inform policy dialogues on how best to ensure accessible, high-quality and sustainable healthcare for Canadians.
This report synthesizes the current body of knowledge on cost drivers in Canadian healthcare. Cost drivers are factors that bring about increased spending on healthcare. Thus, a comprehensive understanding of cost drivers is essential to a productive debate on the sustainability of Canada’s publicly funded healthcare systems.
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Canada, Economics, Funding, Health planning, Hospital administration, Indicators, Mental health, Policy | No Comments
January 31, 2011
Health Care in Canada is CIHI’s annual flagship report on the health care system and the health of Canadians. Since 2000, it has been a resource that tables fundamental issues facing the health care system. Addressing questions surrounding patient safety, wait times, health care spending and analyses on how the system has adapted over time to meet changing needs has made Health Care in Canada a key source for the public and policy-makers alike.
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Benchmarking, Canada, Forecasting, Funding, Indicators, Public health, Statistics & numerical data | 1 Comment
December 2, 2010
As Ontario experiments with new patient-based payment methods under the Excellent Care for All Act, The Change Foundation offers analysis, examples, and advice on using funding models to improve the quality and experience of patient care.
Posted in Mass Media Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Economics, Funding, Health care costs, Health care reform | No Comments
