Managing a Canadian Healthcare Strategy

Book excerpt: Canada’s fragmented healthcare system is one of the most expensive among the OECD countries, yet the quality of its performance is mediocre at best. Canada lacks a system-wide healthcare strategy that brings together many individual federal, provincial, and territorial strategies into a comprehensive and coherent whole. Managing a Canadian Healthcare Strategy is a collection of ten policy research essays by leading Canadian and international scholars who address three important questions. First, if Canada had a unifying strategy, how would the country measure its success and monitor its performance? Second, who are the agents of change to bring about a Canadian system-wide strategy? Third, how can the jurisdictional realities of Canada’s political system be managed to bring about strategic reform? The final section in the volume explores ways to overcome the barriers and impediments that preoccupy Canadians’ concerns about healthcare. A companion volume to Toward a Healthcare Strategy for Canadians, the contributors to Managing a Canadian Healthcare Strategy turn to the critical importance of how necessary healthcare changes can be best implemented.