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A Year After Health Accord Signed, Care Providers Still Waiting for Results

Posted on: Thursday, 15 September 2005, 12:00 CDT

OTTAWA (CP) - A year after first ministers signed a $41-billion health accord that was supposed to fix medicare for a generation, health-care providers say they've seen little evidence that the promised reforms are being implemented.

Dr. Ruth Collins-Nakai, president of the Canadian Medical Association, told a news conference Canadians are wondering what happened to the commitments in the 10-year plan.

A poll commissioned by the medical association and the Canadian Nurses Association suggests that three-quarters of Canadians are less optimistic about the future of health care than they were a year ago.

Only one in three of those polled were confident governments will follow through on a commitment to agree on medically acceptable wait times for key medical procedures.

The Ipsos-Reid survey of 1,001 adult Canadians was taken between Sept. 6 and Sept. 8. The polling firm says the results are accurate to within 3.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Sharon Sholzberg-Gray, president of the Canadian Healthcare Association, said it remains far from clear that provinces and territories will agree on common benchmarks.

In a separate survey, 16 of 18 health care organizations said they are very concerned about the level of consultation between the federal, provincial and territorial governments with respect to health care.

Source: Canadian Press

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