This article originally appeared in the Fall 2021 issue of the Ontario Medical Review magazine.
Doctors develop five-point plan to secure healthy future
COVID-19 has shown that we need to be better prepared for the next pandemic, and that we need a comprehensive plan to address the significant gaps in our health-care system that it exposed.
Our health-care system must be built on the principles of access, equity, efficiency and integration. These objectives are not new. They form the Quadruple Aim, an internationally recognized framework to deliver an effective health-care system. They include better health outcomes, improved clinician experience, better value and improved patient experience.
That is why your OMA is launching Prescription for Ontario: Doctors’ 5-Point Plan for Better Health Care, to strengthen our health-care system and provide better outcomes for Ontario’s nearly 15-million residents.
Our plan brings ideas together from across the province. These ideas, translated into recommendations, represent a shift in how we think about delivering health care in the province. They will help Ontario move away from disconnected silos of patient care into a more connected, integrated and sustainable system.
Ontario’s doctors have extraordinarily high credibility and trust with the public.
Prescription for Ontario’s five key priorities include:
These priorities are laid out in further detail in the platform. Read more about the health-care platform.
Prescription for Ontario: Doctors’ 5-Point Plan for Better Health Care is a framework created after months of input from hundreds of doctors from across the province. The consultation process included many health-care leaders, representing hospitals, nurses, pharmacists, and other allied health-care professionals, as well as leaders from municipalities, the community, business, and thousands of members of the public. In addition, the plan recognizes the uniqueness of northern Ontario with a special focus on the region. Our question to all was simple: “What are the top five key issues and solutions for strengthening patient care?”
Ontario’s doctors have extraordinarily high credibility and trust with the public. The OMA Board of Directors, your president Dr. Adam Kassam, the staff at the OMA and the Priority and Leadership Group of the General Assembly, will be highly focused on advocating this platform to Ontario’s political parties, the media and the public. Through the fall and winter, you will see the OMA promoting Prescription for Ontario: Doctors’ 5-Point Plan for Better Health Care to Ontario’s party leaders and the public right up until election day.
The medical profession has a unique opportunity right now to influence the public agenda and enable solutions to strengthen our health-care system.