Cardiac EASE (Ensuring Access and Speedy Evaluation) — Design of a Single Point of Entry and a Multidisciplinary Team to Reduce Waiting Times in the Canadian Health Care System

2008 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 35-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tammy J. Bungard ◽  
Marcie J. Smigorowsky ◽  
Lucille D. Lalonde ◽  
Terry Hogan ◽  
Evelyn Maier ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Waiting Times ◽  
Single Point ◽  
Evaluation Design ◽  
Canadian Health Care System ◽  
Intake Process ◽  
Point Of Entry ◽  
Group Practices ◽  
Canadian Health ◽  
Canadian Health Care ◽  
Academic Group

Out-patient cardiac consultation in academic group practices often lacks a coordinated intake process, making it difficult to perform prospective testing or to direct undifferentiated consultations to the cardiologist with the shortest waiting list. We created a programmatic approach, with a single point of entry to improve the efficiency of cardiology consultation, without departing from the Canada Health Act. The purpose of this paper is to describe the design of Cardiac EASE.

Economic Efficiency and the Canadian Health Care System

2010 ◽  
pp. 13-25
Author(s):  
Asha B. Sadanand
Keyword(s):  
Cost Effectiveness ◽  
Economic Efficiency ◽  
Public Funding ◽  
Healthcare Services ◽  
Canadian Health Care System ◽  
Medical Needs ◽  
Canadian Health ◽  
Canadian Health Care ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Second Price Auctions

In this chapter the authors examine the compatibility of the objectives of universality and public funding which are two important pillars of the Canadian healthcare system, with the objectives of cost effectiveness and more generally economic efficiency. The authors note that under some very innocuous conditions, markets and other economic based mechanisms such as second price auctions are characterized by economic efficiency and cost effectiveness. For the particular case of healthcare, some additional features that must be considered in the design of the mechanism are that healthcare services and products are valuable if, when taken together they constitute the components of a needed procedure, and otherwise they are worthless to the individual; and timely completion of procedures is what is valued, delays and waiting not only prolong suffering but may eventually prove to be more costly to the system if the condition worsens. They recommend a market-based mechanism, encompassing these features, that utilizes mobile agents representing patients and their medical needs. In order to incorporate the basic goals of universality and public funding, the agents will participate in virtual auctions using a needs based ranking as the currency for making bids.

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