AIM HIGHER FOR HEALTH

COVID has exposed the high cost of mediocrity in our health system – it’s time to rebuild for healthcare we deserve

For the past 50 years, perhaps the best way to describe Canada’s healthcare system was “good enough.”

Now, however, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that “good enough” was not really good enough. It was mediocre at best and Canadians paid a high price as a result – and will continue to do so until we aim higher for a better healthcare system that embraces innovation and technology to deliver better, faster and more efficient care.

Unfortunately, Canada’s healthcare has been notoriously slow in embracing innovation, and Canadians pay the price in diminished care and health outcomes. Among the most shocking results, Canada ranks 18th out of 20 comparable countries for the time it takes for us to have access to new medicines (i.e., two and a half years after a medicine first gets approved in the world). That’s more than a year longer than in Switzerland and Sweden and almost two years longer than in the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan.

In technology, compared to other comparable countries, Canada ranks near the very bottom in number of MRI scanners, CT scanners and radiotherapy equipment per capita, while also severely lagging in hospital beds per capita, as the pandemic made very clear. At the most basic level, more than 4.6 million Canadians don’t have access to a regular family doctor, a recipe for a lack of prevention and care for problems when they could be most simply dealt with at the least cost.

Canadians know their health system needs to be better and want to seize this pivotal time to make it happen. During the pandemic we learned it doesn’t have to be like this, with Canada speeding up its processes for COVID vaccines and treatments and being a world leader in approving them and in getting them to Canadians in record time while using innovative ways to do so. We also saw how quickly doctors adapted to providing virtual care and even hospitals began caring for some of their patients while they remained at home.

In a recent survey of C.A.R.P. members, there was near unanimity that innovative treatments should be available to Canadians at the same time as in other major countries and that using the model for COVID vaccines and treatments would be a good way to achieve that. Almost 96 per cent said having new medicines and vaccines is important for helping us better treat serious diseases such as cancer and dementia.

HISTORY DEMONSTRATES THAT MAJOR DISASTERS CAN HELP INSPIRE AND DRIVE CHANGE

“We can’t afford to wait any more for fundamental changes to our health system to ensure Canadians have fast access to quality care and treatments,” said Bill VanGorder, Chief Operations Officer of C.A.R.P. “History demonstrates that major disasters can help inspire and drive change. We now have a unique opportunity to make the new investments and embrace the new technologies required to build the system Canadians want, need, and deserve.”

We all need to do our part to make this happen.