Canada Health Care System

Canada Health Care System

Introduction

Health systems are facing a growing number of challenges as governments continue to seek cost-effective options to enhance the capacity of national systems to work well. At present, the practice of nursing and midwifery is placed in the context of globalization, increased demand and public expectations in for improving health care services, a research and technology advances, increased financial resources and a global shortage of health workers (Coburn, 2000).

For this paper the topic I have chosen is Health management. Thesis statement for this paper is that it will discuss a key challenge to provide quality health services in Canada. It will provide several key quality improvement strategies and their benefit in the current management literature. Addition to this it will discuss the role of a health manager for improving quality services.

There are many reasons to seek a uniform approach across Canada for defining and ensuring quality in health care. There are also many difficulties in achieving this. The key challenge we will discuss in this paper is the health care equity.

Canada provides an excellent example of how political and economic forces can trump the best intentions of health researchers and workers attempting to promote health equity. It has been noted that the contributions of Canadians to the concepts of health promotion1 and population health2 have been so extensive as to provide Canada with a reputation as a 'health promotion powerhouse' (Curry-Stevens, 2008). The number of Canadian governmental and public health association policy statements, reports, and documents detailing the importance of promoting health equity is remarkable. In Canada, discussion and report writing on these issues continues at a hectic pace

Part and parcel of these health promotion and population health concepts is the importance of reducing health inequities. Reducing health inequities requires action on the primary influences upon health, that is, the living circumstances to which individuals are exposed (Coburn, 2006). In the health field, these circumstances have come to be called the social determinants of health and include income and its distribution, early child development, education, employment security and working conditions, food and housing, health care, and social exclusion, among others (Cerny, 1997). Promoting health equity requires improving the quality of the social determinants of health to which individuals are exposed and making the distribution of these social determinants of health more equitable. The key to improving health equity therefore is reducing social inequities.

The quality of these social determinants is itself shaped by public policies implemented by governments. As one illustration of the impact of public policy, wealthy developed nations differ profoundly in their commitments to providing citizens with sufficient income to attain health. In the Scandinavian nations the distribution of income through wages and benefits is such that family poverty has been virtually eliminated (Faelker & Pickett, 2000). This is much less so in developed nations that are English speaking. A similar situation is seen for the promotion of early child development through the universal provision of free or low cost high quality ...