Spotlight on Health – Prescription for Ontario: Doctors’ 5-Point Plan for Better Health Care, with OMA President Dr. Adam Kassam
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Georgia Balogiannis: In this podcast the Ontario Medical Association looks at current issues of interest in health care. Spotlight on Health gives you all the straight talk. We're Ontario's doctors and your health matters to us. I'm Georgia Balogiannis for the Ontario Medical Association.
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In this episode, OMA President Dr. Adam Kassam discusses the challenges with today’s health-care system and how the OMA hopes to strengthen it with its Prescription for Ontario: Doctors’ 5-Point Plan for Better Health Care.
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Dr. Adam Kassam: You know, Prescription for Ontario: Doctors’ 5-Point Plan for Better Health Care is a roadmap for the future of health care in this province. At 19 months into the pandemic we've seen just how fragile Ontario's health-care system is and also the world's health-care systems are.
This plan allows us to look forward to a future that will have a number of different areas that are in need of immediate focus right now, but, more importantly, if we can collaboratively work together to improve health care, I believe that this may represent even a system-based approach to health care in this country.
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What this plan really focuses on is five key priority areas, and these are the most urgent challenges that we are facing province wide. And there are a dozen specific recommendations in fact for northern Ontario that have, of course, their own unique set of concerns and challenges.
Across Ontario what we have found, that there are five major areas of key focus. The first is reducing the backlog and wait times across the sector. We know that, for example, 20 million points of care have been delayed as a result of COVID-19.
That’s someone's hip or knee replacement that’s gotten delayed, it’s someone's cataract surgery that’s gotten delayed, but it's also someone's access to primary and mental health-care services, it's also someone's access to cancer screening and diagnostics, like a mammogram or a colonoscopy.
So, all across the sector, we have seen ballooning wait times and, and a growing backlog of care that really needs to be addressed in order to make sure that small problems don't become larger problems. So reducing the backlog is our primary focus, and it’ s key number one.
The second point is improving and strengthening long-term and palliative care. Now, I’m a physiatrist and I work in these areas all the time. I service long-term care homes in southwestern Ontario as well as in northern Ontario like in places such as Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie, but I also work at a rehab facility that treats patients who have come out of hospital and are now trying to get back up on their feet and back into the community.
We need to be able to strengthen these linkages, we need to re-strengthen the sector, and this is a second key area that the profession, as well as the province, needs to focus on for the future.
The third, of course, is access and addressing the mental health and addictions crisis. And what we know about this, unfortunately, is that 2020 was the worst year on record in terms of opioid deaths in the province of Ontario and it was a 40 per cent increase from year over year and we know that that was, unfortunately, exacerbated by COVID-19.
The fourth key area is expanding team-based and integrated care. Having a digitally integrated system is so very important for the future. It's why this is going to be a key pillar for the future of health care in the province and it's why we need to be starting to think about what a 21st-century health-care system might look like.
What is the digital infrastructure and the underpinnings of that health-care system? And, ultimately, how does data integration, privacy and security come together in a way to make sure that our health-care system is prepared for the future.
And then finally, the fifth is strengthening public health care, strengthening public health and strengthening pandemic preparedness for the future. And what I mean by this, of course, is that we should have had a national stockpile of up-to-date PPE.
I remember myself and our colleagues were rationed masks, gloves and gowns going to the hospital in the early days of the pandemic. This can't happen in a 21st-century system. It can't happen in a G7 country such as ours. And so we need to
make sure that we, we should have been ready for this one, we got to be ready for the next one.
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Dr. Kassam: This plan is actually the result of the largest consultation in the OMA’s 140-year history. Truly what we know about our system and what we know about health care, more broadly, is that it's a team sport.
And, with that understanding and that philosophy applied to how the health-care system for the future may look like, we wanted to hear from not only those who are working in and around and using health care, but also from patients, their families, and also system partners to better understand what are the key areas of collaboration we can address and we can actually come together on in order to build a health-care system for the future.
We've canvased quite broadly. We had almost 8,000 Ontarions from over 600 communities across the province complete our online survey. We had more than 110 health-care stakeholders, including social service agencies and community leaders to give us some feedback and input on their experience with COVID, but also with the health-care system writ large.
And we also had 1,600 physicians – our members – representing every medical specialty and almost every region of the province, give us input on what they are experiencing on the ground, in the grassroots, and, and on the front lines of health care.
And so, comprehensively, we believe that this is a very important and frankly meaningful engagement by health-care stakeholders and doctors in order to get a better picture of what is happening on the ground in health care, and what are the key points that we need to be able to identify and work on in order to improve our system.
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Dr. Kassam: We know that health care is a top priority for people living in Ontario. In fact health care is a top priority for our families, for our patients, but also for, I would say, every single person who has been gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic.
What we have found is that we can't have any kind of future thought or planning for recovery or rehabilitation in society without a strong and robust health-care recovery. And it's why this plan is so important, right now, because, as we are starting to turn the corner with COVID-19, we have to figure out where we go from here. And let's
not forget that there's a provincial election coming up in, close to seven months from now.
And so, this is going to be, in my opinion, a key priority for all political parties, but it also represents an opportunity not only make sure that health care is on the map and is on the agenda for all political parties, but ultimately that there is a, there are commitments in action that follow from this kind of election platform that will lead to better patient care, better patient outcomes, better provider experience and, ultimately, more efficient and more cost effective ways of delivering care.
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Georgia Balogiannis: This podcast is brought to you by the Ontario Medical Association and is edited and produced by Jodi Crawford Productions. To learn more about the Ontario Medical Association, please visit oma.org.
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