Bringing health care to the workplace

I'm a great believer that the No. 1 priority in life — the one that stands above all others — is to stay healthy. When we become sick and weakened by illness, most of us would give everything we own for the chance to be healthy again.

And when it comes to health care, I think we can all agree: in a civilized society, no individual should be denied medical treatment because he or she is unable to afford it.

However, the dilemma every country faces is figuring out the best way to deliver quality care. As a way to deliver better health-care services at a lower cost, one solution I've strongly advocated over the years is pushing medical care into the workplace.

Bringing doctors and other health-care providers directly into the workplace would have a dual benefit: it would deliver medical diagnosis and treatment in a timelier and more convenient manner, and it would be more cost-effective by reducing the health-care costs paid annually by employers and their employees, as well as the costs paid by government.

Under such a system, corporate-managed health services would be made available to employees and their immediate families, and would be carried out with the consent of employees, who would remain free to seek medical care elsewhere if they wished.

As part of the program, employees would be required to take part in paid preventive health education programs in the workplace that stress the benefits of adopting healthy lifestyle choices. Employees would also be involved in overseeing the management of the program, as members of a workplace advisory board.

All of the stakeholders involved — the health-care providers, the company and its employees — would get a cut of the savings associated with the health-care efficiencies. Employees would share a portion of the savings in the form of a cash rebate, while the company would divide almost half of the savings amongst the remaining stakeholders.

A portion would go to the doctors and medical staff in the form of an efficiency bonus to reward the more efficient delivery of healthcare services, and about 10 per cent would go into a medical emergency account, which would essentially act as a rainy-day fund.

I believe this health-care model is a win-win-win proposition for all of the stakeholders involved. Doctors would be relieved of administrative expenses, would be guaranteed a builtin clientele and would be eligible for bonuses strictly tied to efficiency gains.

The company would have a healthier workforce and less absenteeism due to medical appointments. And employees would receive more convenient service and the ability to earn health-care rebates. Society would also benefit by delivering better health care at a much lower cost through a model that could be replicated by companies across the country.

We need to become more innovative and flexible in how we approach the delivery of health care. Unfortunately, in Canada and the United States, the debate about health care is far too often framed as an either/or proposition: either private care or public care.

But neither of these two systems on their own is ideal: in a completely private system, the poor cannot afford quality health care, and in a completely public system, people do not have timely

A NUMBER OF

EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

HAVE ADOPTED A PUBLICPRIVATE

MODEL.

access to medical attention as a result of governments rationing health-care dollars and a limited number of health-care providers.

I believe the best solution would be a hybrid of the two systems, or a system in which public and private health care co-exist and work in unison. A number of European countries have adopted a public-private model, including France, Denmark and Austria, and their health systems are rated among the best in the world. I see no reason why a hybrid system couldn't work here in Canada.

We've thrown a lot of money at health care over the years, and it hasn't made much of a dent in terms of reducing so-called “hallway health care” in our emergency rooms, or in terms of reducing wait times for medical specialists and badly needed diagnostic tools such as MRIs.

It's high time we stopped being so rigid in our thinking and started adopting the best elements of health-care systems that are delivering better care at a better price.

GETTY IMAGES / ISTOCKPHOTO We need to become more innovative and flexible in how we approach the delivery of health care in Canada, Frank Stronach writes.