There continues to be a need for an evidence-based approach to health care, he noted. Also in that year, there were 125 landed immigrant physicians with arranged employment and 133 without. Despite shrinking physician resources, Canadians have even access to family doctors across all income brackets, but the life expectancy at birth in some rural and northern areas is less than 75 years, compared with a national average of 79 years. That s the year spending on drugs overtook medical services for the first time ever, Decter noted, and he predicted that trend probably won t be reversed anytime soon. Clearly, there s a data vacuum, and each of the document s six chapters ends with a section on information gaps.
Work also needs to be done on how patterns of care differ based on who delivers basic care.
There s an urgent need for accurate emergency room and surgical waiting lists, for instance. There continue to be disconcerting regional variations in practice. And no one really knows how patients fare after receiving hospital treatments. Federal Health Minister Allan Rock said the document reflects the level of co-operation possible between Ottawa and provincial and territorial governments. The system needs more public funding as well as better management, he added.