A new model for heath care
Public opinion polls tell us that confidence in our health care system has eroded and there is increased anxiety about the sustainability of public funding. There is also growing evidence that our system is no longer a high performing system compared to other countries and there is great concern that our system is continuing to fall behind.
In the past, the federal government has been an important catalyst for evaluation of our system including the final report of the National Forum on Health, the Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada, chaired by Roy Romanow, and the report of the Standing Committee on Social Affairs, chaired by former Senator Michael Kirby. In recent years, some have suggested that our government was less interested in leading discussions aimed at enhancing the delivery of health care in Canada than in the past. Evidence that this conclusion may have been unwarranted was the decision of Minister of Health, Rona Ambrose, to mandate an expert advisory panel led by one of Canada’s policy scholars, Dr. David Naylor. The final report on Healthcare Innovation (Naylor Report) that has helped focus the debate on the future of our health care system around policy proposals that aim to make the Canadian Health Care system a high performance system once again.
There is much to digest and many important observations and recommendations to assess in the Advisory Panel’s report. We are particularly pleased to see the recognition by the Advisory Panel of the important role that industry can play in achieving a greater level of innovation within the health sector. The importance of creat- ing a more innovative Canadian society has been highlighted in other reports, like the recommendations of the Coalition for Action on Innovation led by Paul Lucas and John Manley. However, these reports have typically not been focused on a particular industry within the economy but rather on the broader concept of innovation. The Naylor Report is the first major Canadian health sector report, to our knowledge, to recognize the important role that the health care industry can play in helping to achieve consensus on public policy objectives.
The Advisory Panel notes that the health care products and services industry has the potential to create pros- perity while helping Canada’s health care systems to deliver higher quality or more cost effective care and Canadian patients to enjoy longer and better lives. In this regard, the Advisory Panel notes a number of important areas where more can be done.
For example, the Advisory Panel notes the potential for personalized or precision medicine to increasingly tailor diagnostic, treatment and prevention strategies to subpopulations and individuals. The panel calls for the commercialization of made-in-Canada precision medicine concepts and tools from the many Canadian researchers, and early- and later-stage companies working at the leading edge of this field.
The Advisory Panel notes the concerns of many with the inefficient and duplicative regulatory processed governing health care products and services in Canada. This is an area where having two levels of government and 13 jurisdictions involved do not necessarily promote innovation. In this area of government, as in many others, we need to simply put aside constitutional constraints more appropriate for the 20th century in favour of cooperative solutions in governance and regulation more appropriate for a highly competitive global marketplace of the 21st century.
The Advisory Panel notes that Canada is a small market on the international stage, made less attractive by a systematic lack of collaboration and coordination of procurement. A recent report from the Ontario Health Innovation Council came to a similar conclusion. The Advisory Panel heard from both domestic innovators who simply look to international markets (avoiding Canada altogether) in which to commercialize their inventions because of the challenges of doing so in Canada and international firms who hesitate to enter the Canadian market for similar reasons. Neither of these results is desirable.
Regardless of the outcome of the upcoming federal election this fall, the next federal government will need to address the serious challenges that have been described in the Naylor Report. There has never been a time when the leadership of the federal government has been more needed.
The health care products industry has the potential to create prosperity while helping patients to enjoy longer and better lives