Study: Canadians getting better health care value than thought.

Perhaps the powers that be are quite satisfied with Statistics Canada's way of doing things. It provides ammunition for more privatisation in the name of efficiency and when this does nothing to increase efficiency the government will suggest more privatisation is the cure. The statistics also can be used to justify cuts in salaries (not to doctors of course) but to lower level health care support staff in order to increase productivity. Again this can be achieved through contracting out to non-unionised suppliers who pay near minimum wages.

Wednesday » December 26 » 2007

Canadians getting better health-care value than thought: study

Eric Beauchesne
CanWest News Service


Wednesday, December 26, 2007



CREDIT: Chris Schwarz/Edmonton Journal/CanWest News Service
Canadian Doctor

OTTAWA - Canadians are getting more bang for their health-care bucks than official federal government estimates suggest, says a third-party report to be released on Thursday.

The report by the Centre for the Study of Living Standards says Statistics Canada needs to do a better job in measuring what Canadians get out of their health-care system for what they put into it.

Statistics Canada estimates that productivity in the health-care and social-service sector of the economy is not only lagging but actually declining, the report by the Ottawa-based think-tank says.

"Productivity, measured as real GDP per worker based on official Statistics Canada, employment and real GDP figures, in the health-care and social-assistance industry over the 1987-2003 period fell, on average, by 0.76 per cent per year," it says.

That, it notes, is in contrast to the 1.14-per-cent increase in overall productivity in Canada over that same period.

However, the report suggests that the official figures seriously underestimate the true contribution of the health-care sector to overall economic output and "more importantly to the economic well-being of Canadians."

One reason is that measurements of health care costs may not fully take into account improvements in the quality of health care and in turn in the health of Canadians, such as suggested by increases in longevity.

Over the past quarter century, the average lifespan of Canadians has increased by 5.3 years, it notes.

The report recommends Statistics Canada put more effort and resources into improving how it measures changes in what Canadians get out of their health-care system.

"The Canadian health care sector is an increasingly important part of the Canadian economy, particularly in the context of an aging population," states the report, which calls for a debate on how to develop better measures of health-care sector productivity.

"To achieve efficient allocation of resources in the health-care sector, accurate measures of health-care output and productivity are essential," it says.

"The main issue involved with measuring the output of the health-care sector is that there are often no market transactions where quantity and price can be observed," it says. "Further, what constitutes the 'output' of the health-care sector remains debatable."

While Canada uses measures of what it puts into health care as a proxy for what it gets out, other countries are now starting to measure actual output, it says.

"As other countries . . . implement output volume indicators for the health-care sector . . . the comparability between Canadian and international data on the health-care sector becomes less reliable."

The study suggests that Statistics Canada look to research by other statistical agencies in Europe, and in the U.S., to develop a better measure of what Canadians get out of their health care system.

© CanWest News Service 2007








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