Prepared by: Tom McIntosh, Ph.D. and Patrick Fafard, Ph.D.
Canadian Policy Research Networks
Conference Report
May 2007
Introduction
Not many conferences attended mostly by researchers and policy-makers can boast having had the Prime Minister come for lunch. But Prime Minister Stephen Harper made a lunchtime appearance at the 4th annual Taming of the Queue conference in Ottawa on April 4, 2007 to announce, along with federal Minister of Health Tony Clement, agreements between the federal government and the 13 provinces and territories with regard to meeting specific wait time targets in exchange for targeted federal funds. Without a doubt, the announcement caused more than a ripple through the crowd of participants, many of whom had attended all or most of the previous Taming of the Queue conferences, as it served to highlight both the progress that has been made on the wait time issue and how much work still remains to be done.
What follows then (in the full report) are summaries of the presentations made to the Taming of the Queue IV conference that focus not only on the broader themes noted above, but also attempt to distil the key lessons that came from each specific line of analysis. The actual presentations themselves are also available on the Web site of Canadian Policy Research Networks (www.cprn.org) along with those from past conferences and past conference reports.
Closing Comments and Key Messages
In their closing comments, the conference co-chairs re-emphasized the positive messages that were heard throughout the conference that real progress was being made in terms of measuring, monitoring, managing and, ultimately, reducing wait times in different parts of the system in different parts of the country. But there also remained some very hard work left to be done. Indeed the final sessions of the conference, in going beyond the “big five,†in some ways returned the conference to where it had begun with the first Taming of the Queue – to areas where the work is only just beginning. The advantage of course is that work on reducing wait times for primary care, mental health and children’s services will be greatly enhanced by the hard work already done in those areas that have benefited from so much research and political attention in recent years.
Finally, it is clear that the success stories related over the course of the two days of the conference also very much reinforced an idea that has been central to the work on wait times since the issue first began to receive attention from researchers and politicians. Successful wait time strategies require champions willing to take on leadership roles and persevere in the face of sometimes strong opposition. Champions are required within the bureaucracy to sustain commitments to build new systems for monitoring and managing lists within the professions (especially within the medical profession), to break down resistance to change and to inculcate a new culture inside health care institutions and within governments, in order to ensure that there are adequate resources to both begin and carry through with the transformations required.
http://www.cprn.org/documents/48031_en.pdf
Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
The opponents of single-payer national health insurance claim that intolerable waiting times for health care would be inevitable. They use the experience in Canada as proof.
Canada has had problems with excessive queues, but, as this report demonstrates, they are being addressed, and with considerable success.
While Canada moves forward with queue management and fine tuning of capacity, we continue to hang our heads in shame over the financial barriers we place in front of tens of millions of Americans, which prevent access to the most generously funded health care system ever known. And we refuse to act because a humane system that covers everyone might expose us to the alleged threat of preventable queues?!
Where are our champions?