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Romanow Commission Visits UHN (September 21, 2001)
On Thursday, September 27, 2001, University Health Network had the privilege of making an in-person submission to the Romanow Commission about the front lines of health care at an academic health sciences centre. This submission was prepared by a task force of Senior Management, clinicians and Board members and was approved by the UHN Board on September 24, 2001.
Mr. Romanow, the former Premier of Saskatchewan, was appointed by Prime Minister Jean Chretien to lead the commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada. The commission is currently travelling across Canada to gather input into how Canada can sustain a publicly funded health care system.
Mr. Romanow and two of his senior staff were given a tour of several areas of Toronto Western Hospital, including the new Emergency Department, Neuro Intensive Care Unit, Interventional Neuroradiology suite and the Cystoscopy suites. Mr. Romanow spoke to many UHN staff about their jobs and the condition of the health care system. Following the tour, TWH Chief Operating Officer Cathy Zahn, UHN Board of Trustees Vice-Chair Richard Ivey, Corporate Planning Director Sarah Downey and UHN President and CEO Tom Closson made a presentation to members of the Romanow Commission.
This was an important opportunity because no recent national studies have focused on teaching hospitals and their unique challenges, such as severe employee shortages, funding and technology pressures, increasing patient demands and insufficient research resources.
From the view of our front lines, we told the Commission health care has lagged well behind other industries in terms of developing information technology. While the federal government has committed $500 million for improvements, academic health sciences centres should receive additional funds to back IT research - particularly the development of eHealth initiatives such as the Internet, telemedicine and wireless technologies which all carry huge potential in terms of creating cost-effective, timely, efficient health care delivery. Overall, we recommend that governments need to provide an additional $2.5 billion over 5-years to develop a national health information system.
We also recommended that in this time of government cutbacks, the Commission needs to keep an open mind regarding new methods of funding capital and operating costs for teaching hospitals. The Federal Government should encourage greater investment in the health care system through incentives such as matching grants, philanthropy, and public/private sector partnerships. While the Canadian government should establish a mechanism for making long-term commitments for transfer payments, we told the Commission that the province also needs to put in place a multi-year funding formula so that hospitals can better plan and know ahead of time how much money they will be receiving.
Our submission also focused on research. We told the Commission that the federal government needs to provide increased funding to academic health science centres to help create additional labs, study best practices and to keep top-rate professionals north of the border. Implementing such initiatives will enhance the quality of future care while saving money in the long run.
