Regina Regina:
Ontario hospitals function on a global budget which is determined by the services provided and the number of patients seen. This provides the basis for the money given for the following year. So yes they do get more if they provide more services and put the numbers through. Day clinics like Diabetic, Ostomy and such that are not manned 24/7 generate good stats for them because they are comparatively cheap to run and boost their patient stats/services. You work in a lab and would know more about their funding issues.
While our administration overhead is different it is by no way more effiecent. The term too many Chiefs and meetings, not enough Indians is a good analogy of the hospitals here.
Yes, global budget. Exactly as I described it. Of course the more services and patients you treat the more money you get but its still essentially as I stated. You start with X dollars and with every day slowly eat into that amount. When its all up you either do it for free or close down. Each hospital does get other funding from various sources like parking, gift shops, donations, TV rentals, but its a far cry from being able to generate more revenue with more patients served.
Clinics that operate more efficiently, IE see many patients during peak hours and simply close up during slow times do look good on paper
but they are a source of back logs and wait times as they simply don't see as many patients per day as they could with extended hours because thats where it becomes less or unprofitable. In the US if they can make money running 24 hour clinics they can and do.
Under our system they are still capped at primary funding and when they reach that they start to lose money. Thats why they budget being open 8 hours per day, 5 days a week seeing a maximum of X patients per day. They very efficiently treat those X patients per day but our need is perhaps X+5 per day.
Take my lab. We treat approximately 18000 patients per day on the provincial gov't coin. That accounts for about ~68% of our revenue. We also do private testing for clinical trials which accounts for the other 32% of funding but is about perhaps 200-500 "patients" per day. Just this year we are also doing all the testing for Ontarios new cancer care screening program. I'm not sure if the CCOs are on a paid per patient basis but the CTs most certainly are and we can set are own price unlike simply negotiating with the govt. The more CTs we do the more money we make. With the other 18000 patients, once we reach the cap for each and every test group we are obligated to do all testing but receive no additional funds. That doesn't happen in the US. It essentially means that in addition to paying less per medical test we save even more because of all the work we get done for free.
As for the admin costs I'm sorry but all the problems we have so do they and their admin depts are much larger and cost more money. More money going to admin means less going to healthcare. Hell, their top CEOs make more money per year then some of our hospitals get.
In short, our tests are cheaper, our overhead is cheaper, and our wages are lower all of which means we get more actual healthcare per healthcare dollar, hence my use of the term we are more efficient.
They kick our ass anytime somebody can pay more money because theirs is responsive to user fee funding.
The evidence shows that they spend twice as much per person as we do on healthcare yet we are better then or equal too them in so many life quality indicators such as average lifespan, live births per 1000, cancer survival rates, etc.
No doubt the large numbers of people in the US without affordable healthcare drag the numbers down but then thats the point of contention between our system and theirs.
Do Canadians want a US system? You have to ask yourself if our society is willing to greatly decrease the level and availability o healthcare to large segments of the population to improve it for smaller segments of the population. On a person note each person would also have to ask themselves if such a move would mean better
affordable healthcare for them or worse?
In addition, how many Canadians living a good upper middle class life might suddenly find themselves losing their house and on the verge of bankruptcy because of a car accident or because they had a heart attack?
Site Admin 
) and hit me. The > $5000 hospital bills went straight to me. The bills don't get sent to the driver at fault until a court says so. The driver's insurance company fought against it every step of the way.
