In medicine, doctors typically assess a patient’s health before treating their illness. They gather information on symptoms, run tests and blood work, and collect relevant details. This process establishes a baseline to determine if the treatment is effective. Similarly, policy experts apply this concept to evaluate the impact of strategies implemented to fix Canada’s struggling health-care systems. However, according to Haizhen Mou, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, many governments have failed to establish a baseline, making it challenging to assess the effectiveness of treatments. Mou initiated a research project to study the impact of past health accords between federal and provincial governments on the quality and availability of health care in Canada, but encountered obstacles due to the lack of comparable data. Successive federal governments have attempted to measure the impact of financial investments in provincial and territorial health systems by requesting reports on specific indicators. Each new deal has led to incremental improvements in health data collection. The current government aims to overhaul the way Canada collects and shares health data to obtain a comprehensive system overview. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has offered $46 billion in new spending over the next 10 years to address the health crisis that arose after the COVID-19 pandemic. Provinces must establish measurable goals for the funds and agree to harmonize health data nationwide. While Quebec is the only province that hasn’t formally accepted the deal, all provincial and territorial deputy ministers of health (except for Quebec) endorsed a plan to achieve this goal in March. The project began under former Prime Minister Paul Martin in 2004, resulting in a $41 billion health accord that was expected to transform the health-care system. Although the transformation did not occur, it emphasized the need to measure success. Stephen Harper introduced the wait-time guarantee in 2007, resulting in short-term improvements in certain procedure wait times. Trudeau’s government attempted to measure the impact of the 2017 funding deals for home care and mental health services but found incomplete and sometimes non-existent data. While there is some information available through Statistics Canada, Health Canada, and the Canadian Institute for Health Information, the challenge lies in comparing data from 13 independently operating health systems. The federal government now aims to make all provincial data more accessible, encouraging provinces to upgrade their technology. Canada Health Infoway is working on a plan to make individual health records and information easily accessible to patients and clinicians to measure the health of the population and the overall system. The implementation of this plan will take time and investment, but it provides a long-term solution for monitoring the effectiveness of health deals and improving patient awareness of their health baseline.
Can health care deals be effective? Federal government revamping data collection for better analysis – National
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