Canada owes a great debt of gratitude to The Honorable Tommy Douglas for his tremendous work in bringing universal access to healthcare for all Canadians. This is an important element of our national pride and our fundamental Canadian values.
Canada can have the best health system in the world. However, today our healthcare system is facing ever increasing stress as it struggles to keep pace with the changing health needs of Canadians. It's time to re-engineer the system.
The present healthcare system was put in place over 60 years ago. It was designed for a time when the baby boomers were young and healthy, with a focus on acute care. Today, we have a population that is both growing and aging. Along with that, we must consider the increasing number of Canadians living with chronic disease — 45% in 2021 — and that number is projected to rise. Yet we are still using a system designed for acute care to address the very different needs of chronic care patients.
The primary mandate of the Canada Health Act is to protect, promote and restore the physical and mental well-being of residents of Canada and to facilitate reasonable access to health services without financial or other barriers. That’s no longer what’s being delivered. A new way of looking at our healthcare system is necessary.
We need a paradigm shift.
I plan to work in partnership with the provinces to re-engineer our healthcare system. Specifically, we will open two new doors to access the system, no longer relying strictly on a family doctor or the emergency room. We will implement an intelligent, universal Electronic Medical Record (EMR) to proactively identify patients in need. We will make full use of present day technologies, including artificial intelligence, to greatly improve the day-to-day care of patients.
My 3-step roadmap to efficient healthcare proposes to update the paradigm under which the provinces deliver healthcare services, creating new avenues for access that benefit Canadians across the country. The federal government will lead by investing in educating medical practitioners, implementing technological solutions, and building the necessary infrastructure to meet new national standards, while respecting provincial expertise in delivering care on the ground.
By re-engineering our healthcare to meet the modern needs of Canadian patients, together we can build The Best Healthcare System in the World.
Step One: Open two new doors for patients to access the system
Currently, Canadians have just two primary gateways into the healthcare system, either through a primary care physician — which an estimated 6 million Canadians currently don’t have! — or through the hospital’s Emergency room. The lack of primary care giver brings other problems with it : according to the CMA, this raises questions of potential harm due to misinformation as more and more Canadians — as many as 37% — turn to the Internet for medical advice due to lack of access to a physician.
Throwing more money at the problem, including building bigger and bigger hospitals, and stretching the intake capacity of ERs is not the answer. That’s because it’s a structural problem, not a capacity problem. We must open new avenues of access for Canadians to access the system. This will help us avoid online misinformation and critical overcapacity of our hospital emergency rooms.
Action point 1 - Work with provinces to establish Continuous Care Centers (CCCs). These government-run clinics will treat non-urgent and chronic conditions. They will be staffed predominantly by Nurse Practitioners (NP), overseen by family physicians. The federal government will draw from the 450,000 Canadian nurses, including those already within the system, of which 6,000 will be offered the option to upgrade their training to become Nurse Practitioners.
- At a ratio of 1 Nurse Practitioner to 1,000 patients, with 6,000 NPs, the six million Canadians currently without a primary care provider will have a new way of accessing a health professional permitted to prescribe treatments, order tests, and diagnose patients.
Action point 2 - Expand support for home care. Through funding and legislation, support the companies and care providers developing the solutions that will allow more of the Canadians who wish to do so, to heal, age and hospice at home, decreasing the burden on institutional healthcare, and leading to better patient outcomes.
Step Two: Modernize access to medical records
Medical records are currently tracked electronically through the Electronic Medical Record system (EMR). While EMR’s have greatly increased efficiency, they are not filed into a centralized repository and are not readily accessible to primary care givers. Imagine a connected healthcare system where your medical records follow you wherever you go, putting you, the patient, at the center. Seamless access to critical health information means patients won’t have to constantly retell their medical history, and doctors and nurse practitioners can make faster, more accurate diagnoses, with better health outcomes as a result.
It is no longer necessary for the government to attempt to build one, all-encompassing database. This would be a massive undertaking that has all the potential to become a massively expensive failure. Today, using Artificial Intelligence technology developed in Canada, we can apply secure solutions to building modern electronic medical records.
The federal government will implement the infrastructure and set standards through initiatives like a Pan-Canadian Interoperability Roadmap to ensure that all databases meet an interoperability standard. The various databases across the country could then be accessed by an AI system to intelligently collage medical data.
Action point 3 – Ensure all EMRs meet an interoperability standard. This will allow AI systems to access data repositories of all hospitals, clinics, doctors’ offices, and pharmacies. This data can then be intelligently collaged, allowing for easy, secure access to medical records by accredited healthcare professionals — this is in fact a prerequisite for (step one!) opening new access points for patients.
Step Three: Use Artificial Intelligence to better support healthcare professionals
AI technology is developing rapidly and being implemented into healthcare systems across the world as an efficiency measure, with excellent results for patient outcomes. Canadian companies such as Pentavere, (using DARWEN™ AI) and Tali AI are already testing and deploying technology to handle routine documentation, reducing downtime for physicians and other practitioners and freeing them up for patient care.
Preventative implementation of AI can also allow us to transition our healthcare system from a reactive into a proactive one. AI-driven tools can analyze health data to flag risks early, prompting proactive care — for example, catching issues like diabetes or heart disease in their early stages or managing chronic conditions before they worsen.
Action point 4 - Allow all PCP’s and NP’s to have access to AI-assisted report writing tools, reducing the hours spent on paperwork each week, which can be spent instead on patient care.
Action point 5 - Support the implementation of AI as a predictive tool to greatly reduce medical crises and hospitalisations.
Action point 6 - Support the implementation of AI as a diagnostic tool to generate second or third opinions for PCP’s and NP’s in the undertaking of diagnoses.
This 3-step Healthcare Roadmap will empower patients, embrace innovation, and extend care, leading to shorter wait times, smarter spending, and healthier citizens.
Crucially, this approach avoids a one-size-fits-all approach. Instead, Ottawa will work hand-in-hand with provincial and territorial governments, Indigenous health authorities, and frontline professionals to co-develop solutions. Infrastructure and standards will be national – such as the digital data repository or guidelines for AI in clinical use – but delivery will be local, respecting the unique needs of each region.
Through federal funding and vision, and provincial implementation, we will rebuild trust in the healthcare system, ensuring accessibility for all Canadians. Together, we will write the next chapter of Canadian healthcare, ensuring a sustainable, efficient and excellent healthcare system for all.