by medicaltechont | Jun 10, 2017 | Healthcare, private clinics
Rosalia Guthrie is still astounded that it cost her $4,350 to get her shoulder injury assessed by a surgeon who works in Canada’s public health-care system.
She had been waiting in agony for 16 months to see Dr. William Regan when she called his office, asking how much longer it would be. His secretary gave her the number of another clinic to call – so she did. That’s when Ms. Guthrie learned there was another way in to see the surgeon – with no lineup.
But it would cost her. “The woman there called me back … and gave me three [appointment] times … right away,” says Ms. Guthrie, 67, of Salmon Arm, B.C., who was told that she had reached Dr. Regan’s other, private clinic. “Then she said, ‘You have to pay.’”
Read more at https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/investigations/doctors-extra-billing-private-clinics-investigation/article35260558/
by medicaltechont | Oct 17, 2016 | OHIP Billing, Ontario, Privacy, private clinics
TORONTO, ONTARIO–(Marketwired – Oct. 7, 2016) – This afternoon, the Wynne government has made public a formal invitation from the Health Minister to Ed Clark to “assess and validate the value these [health data, e-health records and related intellectual property and infrastructure] systems have created for Ontario and to recommend ways to take them to the next level”.
Read more at http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/coalition-warns-health-minister-privatization-ontarios-health-systems-patient-records-2164963.htm
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 | 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 | Dec 19, 2015 | private clinics, Technology
National Medicare Week has just passed, buoyed with optimism as a fresh-faced government takes the reins in Ottawa — elected partly on a promise of renewed federal leadership on health care. Yet these “sunny ways” are overcast by recent developments at the provincial level that entrench and legitimize two-tier care.
Read more at http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/colleen-m-flood/canadian-health-care_b_8813156.html
