Patient-Focused Funding The Way To Go

The BC government recently announced that it was moving towards patient-focused funding for the province's hospitals. This enlightened move is exactly the kind of thinking the province's health care system needs and is what Minister Kevin Falcon was brought in to do. Our health care system is largely unsustainable with long wait times, rationing of care and a $15 billion dollar price tag that takes up 40% of the budget. With the current block funding model, hospitals get given their budgets ahead of time and each surgery and stitch comes out of that money. With this system, there is no incentive for being efficient. In fact, this funding model creates an incentive to perform fewer and fewer procedures as to not blow through your yearly budget, creating a bizarre scenario where hospitals LOSE money for doing procedures. The patient-focused model announced by the government institutes some funding that follows the patient--it goes to whichever hospital performs the needed procedure. Thus, hospitals MAKE money when they perform more procedures. This injects a much-needed element of competition to the health care system and like most everywhere else the free market is unleashed, choice goes up and price comes down. With the new funding model, hospitals get rewarded with incentives and funding for excellence. For example, if a hospital's maternity ward is exceptional and attracts patients from far and wide, it will get rewarded for that. Unfortunately, the provincial NDP is opposing this new funding model, opting to sound the tired call for more spending and "innovation." One of these demands is unsustainable, the other an empty, meaningless buzz word used by politicians that are out of real ideas. This government plan is a much needed reform, one of several that we need, and will bring down costs, shorten wait lists and improve patient care