Operating in the Dark

Summary

The purpose of this project was to improve policy by defining critical health outcome measures and establishing a model for hospital reporting in Canada. The Atlantic Institute for Market Studies found that Canadians spend an estimated $600 million annually on health systems performance tracking and reporting, yet no jurisdiction routinely collected and published information about the benefits and harms of various treatments. As a result, policymakers and Canadians more generally remained ignorant about access to and outcomes from Canadian health provision services. Health care provision receives the greatest single allocation of Canadian tax-payer funds, and AIMS suggested that with an aging population and decreasing tax base it was on an unsustainable course. Consequently, they recommended that better reporting and analysis of health care spending should be implemented in order to provide better health care services and long term planning for Canadians.

Grant Outputs

Operating in the Dark: The gathering crisis in Canada’s public health care system – http://www.aims.ca/site/media/aims/Health.pdf

This report provides an analysis of the state of Canadian health care data collection as well as its use and availability. It concludes that it is essential to retool the system of information collection and management to ensure that policymakers and Canadians are properly informed when making decisions about the future of the healthcare system.