Look at quality first – Dr. Rachlis speaks about new funding plan

Health policy analyst Dr. Michael Rachlis says Ontario should look at what’s happening to patients, look at quality of care, and then see if the funding models are going to support that or not.

Rachlis spoke on CBC Radio’s Metro Morning, highlighting many questions around implementation of a new funding model, including the lack of a labour adjustment agreement, such as already exists in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Quebec.

“What happens when you tell hospital workers they are losing their jobs, and union affiliation, and their decent wages and benefits, and are going to be working at $12 an hour in the community for some private U.S. company?”

Rachlis said the government should put resources into opening up the debate to include patients.

“It’s really expensive to cut the wrong part off of someone’s body,” Rachlis said, referring to unnecessary mastectomies in Windsor. “If we focus on quality, making sure people take the right drugs, they get the right care when the leave hospital, they get the right care in hospital, then we’re going to find we have a sustainable health system.”

After host Matt Galloway suggested the McGuinty government was forced to make changes by rising costs, Rachlis said “I don’t think that health care is that much of a pressure as people are saying. The rest of government has been cut mightily and government as a share of our overall economy has fallen by 20 or 25 per cent in relative terms over the last 20 years.”

Rachlis said the new competitions to provide procedures are based on the wait list reduction program. In return for getting fee-for-service for these procedures, hospitals were supposed to provide data, a promise Rachlis said the hospitals never lived up to. He said the hospitals were also supposed to set up quality committees.

“What happens if your local hospital isn’t that efficient,” he asked. “Is it simply going to disappear?”

Rachlis also wanted to know what will happen with any potential savings – will it be returned to the government treasury, reallocated by the Local Health Integration Networks, or used for other government services?