Posted on July 8, 2020 by Nancy Gupta and Sukirtha Tharmalingam

When disease is suspected, how long does it take a patient to go from biopsy to diagnosis and treatment plan? It depends where you live. Across Canada, it can take anywhere from days, weeks, or months.

Posted on June 30, 2020 by Katie Bryski and Ellie Yu

It’s a brave new world in health care. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Canadians have turned increasingly to virtual care. According to Infoway’s ongoing tracking survey, virtual visits accounted for almost half of health care visits in May 2020. But what does this shift to virtual care mean for patients and how patients engage with the health care system?

Posted on June 16, 2020 by Nancy Gupta and Simon Hagens

How are you holding up? No, really, how are you feeling? Specifically, in terms of your mental health?

Posted on June 8, 2020 by Katie Bryski

It’s unsettling, going unseen. Several years ago, I sat in an exam room with Kleenex scrunched in my fist. The clinician had just suggested a common procedure — except it wouldn’t be routine for me. Quite the opposite. As she did her best to offer assurance, I felt the realization slowly build. You don’t understand why I’m upset.

Posted on May 19, 2020 by Katie Bryski

It’s been nine weeks since I came home and stayed home. In that time, we’ve seen extraordinary growth of virtual care across Canada. As our health system faces unprecedented challenges, virtual care has proven to be an invaluable tool.

Posted on May 4, 2020 by Katie Bryski and Dr. Rashaad Bhyat

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, virtual care is filling a larger role in health care. Telephones, video chats and secure messaging allow clinics to keep their digital doors open while ensuring that clinicians and patients stay safe and maintain physical distancing. In our last blog post, we discussed some of the factors behind Canada’s rapid adoption of virtual care. In this follow-up, let’s dive a little deeper and see how a virtual care appointment might unfold.

Posted on April 28, 2020 by Katie Bryski and Dr. Rashaad Bhyat

It’s an uncertain and frightening time for health care. The COVID-19 virus has brought unprecedented new challenges for the health system; we are all in uncharted territory as we attempt to flatten the curve. But while it isn’t business as usual for health care right now, Canadians are finding that it is business as virtual.

Posted on April 9, 2020 by Dr. Rashaad Bhyat

In February, the Canadian Medical Association, working with the College of Family Physicians of Canada and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, released their Virtual Care Task Force’s report entitled “Virtual Care Recommendations for Scaling Up Virtual Medical Services.” With the release of the report, I speculated that 2020 might be a watershed year for virtual care in Canada, particularly in my specialty of Family Medicine.

Posted on March 31, 2020 by Anil Patel

Health care organizations need the ability to share health information consistently and efficiently, and the current COVID-19 public health emergency illustrates why.

Posted on March 10, 2020 by Simon Hagens

In 2014 Infoway published “Understanding the Gap Between Desire for and Use of Consumer Health Solutions.” This analysis revealed that while eight in 10 Canadians wanted access to their personal health information, only four per cent had accessed it electronically.^[1]

Posted on March 5, 2020 by Michael Green

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Much of the world’s attention since we began the new decade has been focused on the identification and spread of the Coronavirus, now known as COVID-19. While the World Health Organization (WHO) has not yet declared it a global pandemic, the virus has been labeled a Public Health Emergency of International Concern since January and scientists from across the globe are tracking the virus and trying to predict what will happen next.

Posted by Katie Bryski and Ellie Yu on January 27, 2020

How involved are you in making decisions and taking action to improve your health and wellness? How confident do you feel navigating the health system?

Posted by Dr. Jason Wasserman on January 8, 2020

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Have you ever received a pathology report from your doctor and wondered what everything meant? Did you go home and Google the medical terms? Were you frustrated that you couldn’t find what you were looking for, or that everything seemed to be intended for Americans? Now there’s an easier, safer, more reliable way to learn about your diagnosis, and the information is written by Canadians for Canadians.

Posted on December 10, 2019 by Krista Balenko

Telehomecare is enabling more Canadians to receive care at home, transforming the patient experience and helping to improve their quality of life by avoiding hospital stays and trips to the emergency department. It has also saved a significant amount of money for health systems across the country.

Posted on November 8, 2019 by Rashaad Bhyat and Katie Bryski

When it comes to health, little things can catch us by surprise.

During a recent chat, my colleague Katie related, “I was hiking last summer when I cut myself on dirty metal. Just a random accident, my hand hit a railing wrong.”

Posted on November 14, 2018 by Michael Green

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As Canadians, we’re proud of our health care system — it saves lives. For 50 years it’s stood for equality and compassion, but Canada is no longer a world leader in health care. We’re in the innovation age, but our health care has not kept up.

Posted on October 30, 2018 by Julie Drury

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Patients spend 8,760 hours a year managing their health. There is no doubt they are health care experts and have an incredible depth and breadth of lived experience invaluable to a learning health care system.

Posted on February 20, 2018 by Michelle Wright

At Island Health, we believe in assessing the value of the projects we undertake, and I was brought on to Island Health’s Home Health Monitoring (HHM) team to help evaluate the program and produce a report measuring the program’s overall success. One of the key factors I looked at was the use of acute care (inpatient admissions and ED visits) for clients who are eligible to participate in Home Health Monitoring at Island Health for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or heart failure.

Posted on December 5, 2017 by Colleen McGavin

As one of the patient partners awarded a scholarship to attend this Patients Included conference, I was very grateful and pleased to be able to bring a patient lens to the event. We were warmly included and appreciated at the Partnership Conference. Because of my personal experience as a cancer patient who was treated in many care settings over more than a decade, I’m passionate about wanting to see change in how health records are managed and shared in this country, and I was encouraged to see advances being made.