CARP is calling for a full system re-design of the healthcare system to provide a comprehensive 360 degrees of care that treats Canadians as “healthcare citizens” – with the right to expect timely and appropriate care and equal treatment regardless of age, income and postal code – in its submission to the Advisory Panel on Health Innovation.

CARP’s submission points out that the system is designed around the priorities of the service providers rather than the people it is supposed to serve, which has led to a fragmented and inefficient agglomeration of silos within silos. While many Canadians will welcome the mandate of the Advisory Panel to seek improvements in the quality and accessibility of care, CARP’s submission states that Canadians do not want more pilot projects that add more elements, complexity and costs to the current $215 billion healthcare spending with limited sustained impact. Instead, as taxpaying healthcare citizens, Canadians want a system that fully wraps around their needs, enabling them to maintain their health and well-being. As a result, CARP calls on the government to stop prioritizing the needs of the service provider and instead prioritize the needs of the healthcare citizen.

Federal Health Minister Rona Ambrose launched a new Advisory Panel on Healthcare Innovation in June 2014. Led by Dr. David Naylor as the chair, the panel’s mandate was to identify promising areas of innovation in Canada and internationally that could potentially reduce growth in health spending while improving quality and accessibility of care and to recommend how the federal government could support those innovations. Through its submission, CARP participated in the recent public and stakeholder consultation.

Read CARP’s submission to the Advisory Panel on Healthcare Innovation