by medicaltechont | Oct 8, 2016 | eHealth, Privacy
The cash-strapped provincial government wants to cash in on the patient data collected by eHealth Ontario without compromising privacy or privatizing record-keeping.
The cash-strapped provincial government wants to cash in on the patient data collected by eHealth Ontario without compromising privacy or privatizing record-keeping.
With the controversial electronic health agency’s 10-year mandate expiring at the end of 2017, Queen’s Park is looking at what’s next for eHealth.
Health Minister Eric Hoskins on Friday asked Premier Kathleen Wynne’s privatization guru, Ed Clark, for help “in valuing public and private assets with respect to Ontario’s digital health strategy.”
“I would ask you to provide the government with a value assessment of Ontario’s digital health assets and all related intellectual property and infrastructure,” Hoskins wrote in an open letter to Clark.
Read more at https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2016/10/07/liberals-want-to-know-cash-value-of-ehealth.html
by medicaltechont | Jun 4, 2016 | Doctors, Technology
Ontarians could soon be able to find out how much their doctors are billing the province’s health insurance plan annually.
An adjudicator with the province’s Information and Privacy Commission has ordered the government to disclose the names of doctors and the amounts they have billed the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP).
Read more online at http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-doctors-ohip-billing-information-privacy-1.3615347
by medicaltechont | May 28, 2016 | Doctors, Technology
For under $34, many Canadians can purchase a meal, see a movie or even buy a weekly bus pass. What most Canadian’s don’t know however, is that an average doctor’s appointment costs the province just under $34.
Read more at http://mobilesyrup.com/2016/05/18/akira-and-the-rise-of-telemedicine-in-canada/
by medicaltechont | Mar 5, 2016 | private clinics, United States
Governments across Canada have been caught in a fiscal bind over the entire period of neoliberalism. On the one hand, they have pursued austerity and restraint almost without interruption since the 1990s; and, on the other, they remain under pressure to deliver some minimal social security for welfare, healthcare, pensions and so forth. Since the eruption of the financial crisis in 2008 this contradiction, a core tension of meeting social needs in capitalist societies, has gotten worse. The combination of a long depression in economic growth and permanent austerity in government budgeting has further cramped government fiscal capacities. This has led to all kinds of efforts, following the new public management organization of the state, to privatize, contract-out, marketize and so on, government functions and services.
Read more at: http://www.globalresearch.ca/canadas-struggle-against-the-privatization-of-healthcare/5508667
by medicaltechont | Feb 8, 2016 | Canada, Technology
A new report by researchers at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences released yesterday provides an eye-opening look at how our healthcare dollars are being spent in this province.
This is an in-depth look at our healthcare spending at the level of each individual in the province. Researchers tracked every hospital admission, physician visit, home care visit, lab test, and drug prescription for 14.9 million Ontarians between 2009 and 2011.
They accounted for $30 billion, or 75 cents out of every healthcare dollar spent in this province, and found that 43 per cent goes to hospital care, 27 per cent to doctors, 15 per cent to drugs and lab tests, and 15 per cent to long-term care.
As it turns out, “high-cost users” consume a disproportionate amount of these resources. Ten percent of the population accounted for 77 per cent of spending and 1 per cent accounted for 33 per cent of spending. Each person in that top 1 per cent consumed almost $45,000 a year, compared to a maximum of only $333 a year for each person in the lower 50 per cent cost bracket of the population.
http://globalnews.ca/news/2449651/a-look-at-where-ontario-healthcare-dollars-are-going/
