Medicare Stories

[ktk]

Anybody else heard of this site or one like it:

MedicareStories.com

I was looking for a place to do some research on experiences, any help is appreciated!

Thanks!

[Michael Hardner]

A site like this isn't a good place to research facts. Maybe researching experiences would work, but I'm not sure what that means.

If you read fifty stories that indicate neglect and poor treatment, what does it mean in terms of the big picture of healthcare in Canada ? The answer is : we don't know.

Does anybody have examples of sites that show long-term summary figures regarding care, perhaps with accompanying analysis from independent sources ?

[ktk]

The CIHI.ca site isn't bad and the Fraser Institute is too right wing. I need grass roots stories, but the MedicareStories.com site is empty, I guess they just started.

Thanks

A site like this isn't a good place to research facts. Maybe researching experiences would work, but I'm not sure what that means.

If you read fifty stories that indicate neglect and poor treatment, what does it mean in terms of the big picture of healthcare in Canada ? The answer is : we don't know.

Does anybody have examples of sites that show long-term summary figures regarding care, perhaps with accompanying analysis from independent sources ?

[Michael Hardner]

I have checked out CIHI before. Time to check it again...

From the "About" page:

The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) is one of Canada’s premier sources of high quality, reliable and timely health information.

An independent, Canadian, not-for-profit organization,

Then below...

How is CIHI funded?

CIHI is a not-for-profit organization, primarily funded through bilateral funding agreements with federal and provincial/territorial ministries of health and individual care institutions.

How independent could they be when they're funded by the same organizations they're monitoring ?

This is the fact that got me off on the wrong foot when I first looked into them. But let's continue:

The main problem with the site is it's too busy, and there's too much there. It comes across more like a public interest magazine with statistics available. Front and centre is CIHI's latest news items, rather than an easy locator of the kind of information people need. Clearly, the site needs a simpler look overall.

In my opinion, some top-level summary graphs should show up somewhere on the main page. When you find the health indicators 2005 report, it's 28 pages of stuff like 'Prostactectomy Readmission Rate 2001-2002 to 2003-2004, Zone 1 Nova Soctia', ie. meaningless.

Again, if the report were better designed then it would be more useful.

Also, there are some things missing. Understandably, wait times are hard to get to as there isn't a standard way to collect these types of things, but I couldn't find any physician availability reports anywhere either.

All of this being said, it's a good thing that CIHI exists. I can see from the board of directors that they're loaded with deputy ministers of health, the Chief Statistician of Canada, and the 'Assistant Deputy Minister of Strategic Planning, Evaluation and Information Management' (see my comments about about independence) so they have access to the information.

If you read John Ralston Saul's 'Voltaire's Bastards' then the CIHI shouldn't exist, as it provides a way for the public to evaluate the technocrats. But yet CIHI does exist. The reason that it does is that it's only partly independent, and it is providing information that the average person doesn't read, and wouldn't understand if they did.

So, what we have is a group of highly intelligent insiders who need to go the extra step to bring this information to the people, so that the information can be used by them (ie. us) to really evaluate how they're doing. I would add representatives of the media or even advertising people to the board. They understand how the dirty commoners (ie. me) think, and could deliver this informational goodness to the hungry masses.