Explore Health Care in Ontario: A Shift in Directions
In Canada,health care funding is legislated by the Canada Health Act. The federal government is responsible for creating national standards for health care services provided throughout the country (The Council of Canadians,2013). Each province makes their independent decisions regarding health care services, delivery and expenditures.
In Ontario, the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care defines how tax payers receive health care services across the province. Most basic health services are publicly funded through the government. Ontario provides this through the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP),which are paid into by Ontarian's tax dollars.
Provision of health care services are controlled regionally and are divided into 14 Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs) which are the health authorities responsible for regional administration of public healthcare services in the province (LHIN 2014). "Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs) plan, integrate and fund local health care, improving access and patient experience (LHIN, 2014)."
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Ontario's health care system is undergoing major cutbacks and restructuring including closure of public health offices and dissolving of LHINS. The governments vision is to create 'Health Teams' to ultimately cut costs and change the direction of decision making. Check out the following video of what a Health Team will look like.
"To coordinate health care delivery oversight, reduce health care bureaucracy and regional administration silos even further, the government will continue the process of consolidating six existing Provincial health agencies and the costly and duplicative Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs) into a new, single agency (Ontario Ministry of Finance,2019)."
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The Ontario Health Team model plans to promote more collaboration between patient, family, caregivers and health care providers in hopes of proving higher quality care and coordination (Government of Ontario, 2019). Read more about Ontario Health Teams.
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Below is a representation how how health care has been operating in Ontario. However, Ontario's government has removed parts of the system in hopes to have a more unified and organized approach to health care. Community Care Access Centres (CCACs) have been phased out in the last 5 years and were dissolved into the 14 LHINs across Ontario. Most recently, in 2018 it was decided by the PC government that the 14 LHINs will also dissolve and be replace with health teams. The second image below as adapted from the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC) is a current representation and visual of Ontario's plan for the new health teams.
Source: http://healthcaretomorrow.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Understanding-the-Health-Care-System.pdf
