This is my first column for the Huffington Post Canada and so it's only appropriate that I begin with a confession.
About six years ago I did something that most people would consider crazy: I quit a high-powered, high-paying job that I loved. I was the chairman and CEO of Worldsource Wealth Management, responsible for four companies nationally, with three reporting presidents and about 1,200 employees/advisors.
I didn't do it because I was bored and wanted to find myself. This was not Eat, Pray, Love. I did it because I had an epiphany about our health care system. It was an epiphany that came at a time of profound sadness -- while sitting in a Toronto hospital watching my father die.
For three days, I sat at my dad's bedside waiting for him to draw his last breath. And while I did, I realized that our health care system -- a pillar of Canadian life -- was crumbling and badly in need of a fix.
My 71-year-old father had been admitted to hospital with advanced lung cancer and was meant to be taken to palliative care. But instead of consulting one single medical record, staff gave him a blood transfusion he didn't need and tried to send him home.
To be perfectly clear, the hospital's error did not contribute to his ultimate death. His cancer was at a point where it was only a matter of time. But what I witnessed through our health care journey convinced me that his was not an isolated case. What I saw was, in fact, a systemic problem.
I decided that, in order to positively transform the status quo for patients in the health care system, I was going to have to disrupt my own comfort zone to do so. I quit my job and the successful career I had in the investment management industry and began researching Canada's health care system. I became president of Best Doctors Canada, a medical advocacy service that offers patients access to second opinions from some of the foremost, peer-nominated medical experts in the world.
As a business person, my first step was understanding what patients needed and creating a passionately customer-centred model to deliver on those needs; helping people to be certain and empowering them to become true partners with their treating teams. To do that, I made collecting and digitizing our members' medical records the highest priority. Once they were electronic, we could use our database of 50,000 global experts in more than 450 specialties and subspecialties to confirm a diagnosis or recommend a different treatment.
Today this employer-paid service changes diagnoses in 22 per cent of cases and recommends modifications to treatment plans in more than 60 per cent.
But what's particularly gratifying to me is that we have managed to provide 5,000,000 Canadians with a service that puts them at the centre, gathers their complete personalized medical records should they become stricken with disease, and connects both the member and their treating team to world-renowned expertise to improve outcomes.
The Government of Ontario's struggles to introduce electronic medical records have been well publicized and I don't intend to pile on. Suffice it to say: it is just a symptom of a greater problem with our health care system. What is encouraging is that there is now more talk about patient-centred models, and that will help drive transformation.
I firmly believe that first-class care should be available to all Canadians regardless of their ability to pay. I also believe in choice. But the system has to be sustainable, and ours currently is not. Estimates are that by 2030 health care will consume over 80 per cent of the Ontario's budget, leaving less than 20 per cent for everything else the government need to provide.
Leaders with business experience can help. Strategic business thinking, properly applied, will see patients benefit. I know there are many other business leaders like me who want to collaborate with governments and health care leaders - so that together we can find and implement ways to make the system more innovative, sustainable and quality-improved.
It's time to disrupt the status quo. To realize that our comfort zone with respect to health care is just an illusion. We have a tsunami fast approaching and it is time to shore up. Or risk losing the one thing dearest of all to Canadians.
This is my passion and so I will devote much of my time to the future of Canadian health care, exploring new ideas and participating in an important conversation that concerns us all.
I look forward to hearing from you along the way.
Follow Dianne Carmichael on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dianncarmichael
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An excellent counterpoint of realism to the miasma of spin and propaganda about healthcare that is making the rounds these days.
Besides the excellent "CDM's Top and Bottom 10 Ideas for Health Care Transformation " - I recommend reading the full report "Neat, Plausible and Wrong: The Myth of Health Care Unsustainability"
Links to both are on the front page of the CDM website.
It is unfortunate that Carmichael experienced incompetence in the health care of both her parents. I can certainly appreciate the value of a second opinion. I gather from Carmichael's article even a hands on medical practitioner can be surpassed by a remote expert. Thus, fear of a misdiagnoses by a local doctor could certainly motivate one to opt for her plan. Uncertain, however, is the misdiagnosed rate of her experts since she does admit that misdiagnosing is inherent in the system.
Nevertheless, kudos to the imaginative and opportunistic doctors for devising yet another system to increase the cost of medical service. Congratulations, also, on the thin line they walk between the alluded incompetency of local medical staff and the inerrancy of their 50,000 experts.
Would I be seen as skeptical to want to see the fine print of their contracts?
Fortunately for you running health cares services is a lot easier than running a website.
As my late mother's primary care-giver, I witnessed - for the most part - the very opposite.
A dedicated family physician who did everything within her reach - including many home visits. Specialists as needed with minimal delay. Blood transfusions administered with expertise at the ER. Immediate and highly professional hip replacement surgery on that terrible day when she fell and broke her hip. A dedicated rehabilitation team at a well run Toronto facility. A world class thoracic surgeon advising on her lung issues. Home nurses and PSW's to help me in caring for her. Equipment, personal and tests made available promptly as needed. A caring and dedicated community medical services advisor who jumped through hoops to make things happen. Arrangements for both respite and palliative care as my own abilities faltered.
Before we acted on respite and/or palliative care, her strength was fading fast and pneumonia set in. The hospital doctors and nursing staff behaved like the true professionals they were.
In the final hours, a gentle and dedicated end of life team guided us through the unknown.
She died in the arms of my brother and myself.
Was it perfect care? No, of course not. Some things could have been better. There were some mistakes and inefficiencies along the way - but nothing too bad considering the stresses everyone in the system is under.
That’s my recent Canadian health-care experience in under 250 words.
No bull. No politics.
My ability to pay is what I pay now as a Canadian citizen. I can't pay more.
So if I understand you correctly you are going to help me regardless of my ability to pay. .Now you do understand that means you will treat me for free.
My wife needs a lot of medical attention, and I take her mother to the doctor on close to a weekly basis. They can't afford to pay more either but they would be happy to get first-class treatment for free.
I would love to see how that business model works.
How do you do that? Because if you can then sign me up and my family/ In fact I personally now at least a hundred people in my situation. We'll all sign up..
And explain why YOU should decide whether I am allowed to buy it for myself.
This is nothing more than an attempt at softening Canadians up as far as the privatization of health care.
Dianne Carmichael has worked hand in hand with Kellie Leitch for a while now. Kellie Leitch has been brought in by Harper since this rehashed article initially appeared in the Globe to spearhead the movement towards privatizing healthcare.
Kellie Leitch exhibited her appalling lack of scruples regarding the medical profession recently by backing Harper on his asbestos stance. If she's willing to sell out on that one why on earth would anyone want to listen to her or her buddy Carmichael when they start talking the wonders of privatization and healthcare?
That choice thing leave you a little dizzy?
That article struck me as an effective advertisement for the businesses it mentions, as does this post.
The only thing holding us back from better health care is union greed and socialist ideology.
People suffer and die needlessly as a result of that political dogma and socialist greed.
By the way there are 40 - 50 million Americans who would love to have our health care system.
There is about 10 million.
Got any idea of what MediCare and MediAid are?
Nah, didn't think so.
Polling on American support for universal care varies wildly (depending on the wording of the question). Having said that, the data suggests that a good 30+% of Americans want a single payer system. That's about 100 million people.
But, please, continue making snarky and superficial comments. They're fun to read.
I totally agree with your observations. I have seen both my parents being treated in Ontario and Quebec. Although their care was first rate (qualitatively better in some respects in Ontario), I cannot see how this system is sustainability without taking advantage of better information systems, and resource management approaches to manage the scarce resources. If India can high level quality care with a fraction of our resources, so can Canada. I am also concerned about our lagging efforts in long term care as I think this will be the next big challenge for Ontario as the population ages. Thank you for your advocacy efforts.
Why the obsession with the US system?
Singapore has better health care than us, should we talk about how they do it or should we spread boogyman stories about the US system?
Which approach is more likely to improve our system?
It's appalling how simple minded and obsessive you ideologues are.