Author
Canadian Health Policy Institute (CHPI)
Objective
This is the first edition of an annual report by CHPI that compares the availability of medical resources in the public health systems of the ten Canadian provinces.
Data and methods
We collected information on a set of indicators pertaining to the availability of the most important medical resources (human, physical and technological) in all provinces, for which data were available. The most recent available data were obtained from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) and the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH).
Results
The provincial governments in Atlantic Canada are the highest spenders in healthcare as a percentage of the population. The three most populous provinces (Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia) on the other hand are those that devote the lowest amount of public money per person to healthcare. Ontarians can generally rely on less human resources and medical technologies in proportion of its population than residents of most other provinces. The same situation holds true for British Columbia. In Quebec, the level of human and medical resources made available to the population stands consistently above the Canadian average, yet Quebec ranks as the least expensive province by public spending per capita.
Conclusion
The level of human and medical resources available varies greatly among the Canadian provinces, and this does not seem to correlate with the level of public healthcare spending per capita. This suggests that there are differences among the provinces in terms of the efficiency with which the public funds are used in their healthcare system.
