There’s much hand-wringing about the results of a new Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy Survey sponsored in part by the soon-to-be defunct Health Council of Canada.
While the media focus is on the bigger failures indicated by the survey, the question is, how much of it is even accurate?
Taken between March and June 2013, the survey includes a larger than usual sampling of Canadians thanks to the governments of Alberta, Ontario and Quebec paying to expand their sample sizes to more than 1,000 respondents each. That’s a good sampling for opinion accuracy, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to an accurate profile of Canada’s health system.
While the results may indicate some overall general trends, there are significant contradictions in the results that should throw up caution flags.
On the one hand Canadians have significantly more confidence in their health system than they did nearly a decade ago and give very high ratings to the quality of care. Fifty per cent of Ontarians believe the system works pretty well and only needs minor changes – that’s well above the national average of 42 per cent.
OPSEU Diablogue 