How to make health care better in Canada? We asked 5 experts - National | Globalnews.ca

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised given the complexity of the problem. But all of these points in one article seem quite overwhelming.

Personally I think access to family doctors and stronger communities (get people off their phones and talking to their neighbours) would fix the lions share of these issues.

Reproductive health needs to be protected. Well honestly it’s insane to me that it’s not a given. What the hell sort of dystopian society are we devolving into.

Provide a framework wherein nurses must be staffed at specific rates in hospitals and LTC homes so that these places can't deliberately understaff, with penalties for not meeting the requirements.

Let foreign doctors work towards Canadian credentials instead of forcing them into another field. Recognize more foreign schools so that people can train up to meet the Canadian standard.

Those are the 2 that I've seen talked about the most.

Canada makes it very hard for foreign doctors to work here.

This seems like a scenario where throwing money at a problem might help. The feds can put money into universities to grow class sizes:

Reimer argues that Ottawa can help address this crisis in several ways, including increasing medical school class sizes, making it easier for internationally trained doctors to work in Canada and recruiting doctors from other countries, including the United States.

Similarly, the last Liberal government was very effective at getting provinces and municipalities to change policies by offering funding. Incentives to convince provinces to effectively deploy nurse practitioners could help:

“We have over 10,000 nurse practitioners in Canada, with more than half of them in Ontario,” Grdisa explained. “But despite their proven track record of delivering high-quality, cost-effective care, they’re still not being used to their full potential.”