Health committee  I can speak from my experience working in primary care in Ontario. In Ontario there have been some moves towards new funding models in order to improve access to primary care physicians. Traditionally, family doctors and doctors in general are paid fee for service, so there's be

Health committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Wilks. I've had some experience working in isolated communities. As a resident I spent a few months in Moose Factory, a community on James Bay. The technological tools that we used to access some specialist input were telehealth and telemedicine.

Health committee  One of the ones that I spoke about in my remarks, I think, is one that's moving in that direction. That's around providing better collaborative support for patients who have been recently admitted to hospital and who are frail, often elderly, who are at high risk for being readmi

Health committee  As you know from your own work as a family physician, oftentimes when we make referrals to specialists we may not need the whole meal deal. We may not need a complete workup or assessment from them. It may be a referral just to answer a few questions. We used to do this through

Health committee  It's a decentralized model. If I'm in Ottawa and I'm putting in an e-consultation, it doesn't have to go to the specialist at the Ottawa Hospital, necessarily. It could be someone in London, Ontario, or someone in Windsor. There's not a lot of great data, as far as I understand i

Health committee  I was commenting on how spreading innovation, including technological innovation, is something that we feel the federal government should take strong leadership in, and as part of the federal leadership and the health accord, that includes the spread of technological innovation.

Health committee  Our organization is an advocacy organization. We're made up of a volunteer board of directors, and we have a very small staff. I think we have one and a half staff. We all practise medicine in our own settings, so we don't spend any money as an organization on technological innov

Health committee  We're here in front of the committee because we're an organization that represents physicians across the country who are interested in improving public health care. We work in different settings that are employing these innovations. We're acting as a listening board for colleague

Health committee  Thank you for the question, Ms. Davies. As I mentioned during my remarks, we already have some of the infrastructure to do what we're suggesting. The Health Council of Canada has already set up this innovation portal. They're already becoming a repository for best practices. We

Health committee  Thank you and good afternoon. My name is Dr. Danyaal Raza and I'm a family doctor here in Ottawa. I'm here today on behalf of Canadian Doctors for Medicare. We are a physician-led organization supported by thousands of Canadians, and we advocate for the improvement of our publi

Finance committee  What we're being told is that the cuts are to equalize the delivery of health care for refugees as for other Canadians, but the reality is that across provinces most Canadians on social assistance had the same level of benefits as refugees did before the cuts. Now that the cuts h

Finance committee  I don't know if I'm able to comment on its traditional role, but I certainly agree that the federal government's role should not be limited to just writing cheques to provinces. There's an important role for setting national standards. We are a bit late in the game, perhaps, but

Finance committee  I think that's a great idea. One of the very exciting things that's happening in health care is interprofessional care. Nurse practitioners are taking a more active role in providing patient care, and pharmacists are administering vaccines in Ontario. There are all these ways th

Finance committee  Thank you for the question, Ms. Nash. There has actually been quite a remarkable focus within the medical community on social inequality's implications for health. The recent Canadian Medical Association meeting in Yellowknife, in fact, made this its theme. Physicians are speak

Finance committee  Thank you. These are key successes, and there are more. We need to scale up these innovations. The federal government is in a key position to push for this kind of reform to a renewed health accord. We also see room for national leadership in evidence and translation to provid