Posted by Michael Wonder on 10 Jan 2017
The real health-care change we need? Strong leadership
10 January 2017 - Saskatchewan has announced that it will scrap its 12 health regions and create a single health authority. It is the latest province to abandon the once-popular approach of regionalisation in favour of more centralised control.
Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and Alberta all have a single administrative body for health care; British Columbia has gone from 20 regions to five; Manitoba from 11 to five; New Brunswick from eight to five, and so on.
The only holdouts are Quebec, which has 18 regional health and social-services agencies, and Ontario, which has 14 local health integration networks (and 76 sub-LHINs).
While there is a lot of rhetoric about the horrors of bureaucracy and the benefits of consolidation, we don’t really have any idea what the best management structure is for a health system, and for patients.
