CBC White Coat Black Art

CBC is running a great series about healthcare called White Coat Black Art. You can download podcasts here. It's a good review and analysis of why there are problems in our healthcare system from the inside. I think it's a pretty balanced review, and has lots of examples of how to make it right within the public system.

There's a good one about patient navigators in the cancer system. The CHC model works well with the model of someone who helps patients with complex conditions manage their condition. Another episode talks about how to decongest the emergency department, which has some links to a CHC that would provide open access and some level of urgent care in the community. They're all worth listening to.

Health Care Funding Models

Section 7, Funding Approach of Building a Stronger Foundation: A Framework for Planning and Evaluating Community-Based Services in Canada identifies four funding models along a continuum:

• utilization-based, or fee-for-service
  
• population-based, often called capitation
  
• needs-based, where funds are allocated based on the identified needs of the target population
  
• budget/request-based, where the provider asks for money and the funder gives it
  

It's worth reading the section on funding approaches. It's a brief and readable overview of funding models that have been used.

I think there's a good case for population-based funding, mixed with budget/request. The basic funding would be population-based. Certain initiatives will always need some new, outside, or extraordinary funding (e.g. building a new building, buying major equipment, special programs, education campaigns, etc).

I'll try to put my del.icio.us links on health care funding into this blog somewhere, so you can read some other articles I've found.

Adding Your Comments to a Post

Below a post you'll see a message saying "0 comments" (or "1 comment" etc.). If you want to comment on something someone posted, click on the comments message and you'll be allowed to post a comment.

To see someone else's comments without adding a new comment, click on the article title.

How To Post

To add an article (a "post") to this blog, look up in the top right corner of the page. Click on "New Post". Then type in a title and type what you want to say. You can

• make bold or italic text
• change the colour
• make a bulleted list (like this one) or a numbered list
• add pictures or video
• check spelling
  

If you're not sure which button does which, just put the mouse pointer over a button for a few seconds and you'll see a little help message.

Finally, you might want to put some labels on the post. We're using the label "how to" for these articles on how to use the blog. On the left side of the page you'll see a list of labels. Click on a label and you'll see all the articles that have that label.

You can go back and change the post after you publish it, so don't worry about making things perfect.

Innovation at Group Health Centre

Group Health Centre in the Sault has advanced the state of collaboration between their caregivers and pharmacists. See the video here or read about it here.

About This Blog

This blog is an experiment in using publicly available technology to help a grass-roots collaborative effort. In this case the grassroots collaborative effort is a health co-op or community health centre for the lower mainland of British Columbia. And what does that mean? Well, this blog is meant to help us answer that question.

Over the course of the next few days we hope to post a few more articles on ways we can use this blog. Stay tuned.