e-Health -- would you like a ??? with that!

I recently came across the new MoH model for hospital financing in Ontario, and it really has me fired up!
You see, historically, hospitals have been funded relative to their annual budgets (aka Global Funding), but this policy has now been replaced by a new formula (aka Patient-based funding), which basically stated, is:
number of patients seen + services delivered + quality of those services = funding.
Now, here's where my imagination gets going, for:

• since all hospitals in the Province are under the gun to make quality job one, perhaps we can remove "quality..." from the equation
• since most hospitals are cash-strapped and probably unable to increase the number of services delivered in the short term (you probably won't see your local hospital adding a new wing any-time soon), let's also remove  the "services..." component

So, what we'll be ending up with is an equation where there's a direct correlation between the number of patients seen and funding for your local hospital; you may see where I'm going with this -- your favourite hamburger franchise isn't going to make money much unless they maximise sales, no matter how high the quality or variety!
Note also that the impact of all this will be felt sooner than later -- the "Global Funding" model will be reduced to 30% and "Patient-based Funding" will have to make up the rest of the budget, starting April 2014 -- there's a great overview on the above, courtesy of my LHIN.
It appears then, that the number crunchers at the Ministry have big plans for us, my friends -- they're predicting the number of hospital visits we'll make for the foreseeable future, and basically using the results to  allocate our hospitals' budgets.
It kinda feels like they're banking on us to be even more disease-ridden!

I say we make an effort to thwart those plans, because what we really should be seeing is a policy that encourages increased "Global Funding" expenditures today (in terms of constant "in-your-face" health education, greater use of Information Technology to share patient information, etc.), to effectively decrease the size of future "Patient-based funding" requirements -- educated communities today = healthier communities tomorrow.
After all, it's common knowledge that lifestyle is inversely correlated with disease.

So, how about we:

• "eat-our-greens", as my mother still advises
• demand EHR and EMR systems from our health care providers that seamlessly share data
• wear down the various surfaces at the local parks and recreation facilities with our exercise routines

That way we'll leave our hospitals free and appropriately funded for true emergencies.


Ernest A. James


President & CEO
Regal Informatics Inc.