HESA Committee Report

ANALYSIS OF IMPLEMENTATION

ACCOUNTABILITY

Health Council of Canada

The 2003 Accord created the Health Council of Canada (the Council) to monitor and report on Accord commitments (measuring progress on health system reforms).  In the 2004 Accord, First Ministers expanded the Council’s mandate to include reporting on the health status of Canadians and health outcomes.

F/P/T Ministers of Health (except Alberta and Quebec) participate as Corporate Members of the Council. In addition, there are 26 government- and non-government-appointed Councillors. Currently, they are a mix of officials and experts in specific health fields (patient/client issues, health care systems, performance measurement, community leaders).

The Council publishes an annual report that provides a broad overview and assessment of Accord initiatives, with a focus on the health care system. This report regularly includes information on some comparable health indicators.  In addition, the Council releases issue-specific reports on health care and population health issues including: progress on wait time reduction; primary health care and home care; chronic health conditions; lessons in diabetes; and pharmaceuticals related issues.

F/P/T Reporting under the 2004 Health Accord

• Jurisdictions ultimately are accountable to their publics on the quality and availability of reporting on the priorities under the 2004 Accord.
• Jurisdictions report to their publics regularly on health outcomes and health system performance (e.g., Ministries of Health annual reports and issue-specific reports). 

Future Work on Data and Indicator Development

• The ability and interest of all jurisdictions to report comparably is affected by the availability of relevant and technically adequate indicators.  The federal government is working to improve data and indicators as a means of encouraging P/Ts to improve reporting.  The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), a neutral third party independent not-for-profit F/P/T organization, is well positioned to continue the indicator development work. CIHI provides essential data and analysis to support reporting on Canada’s health care system, and works in collaboration with F/P/T governments on data development and reporting of health care system performance.
• To this end the federal government provided additional funding to CIHI in Budget 2007 ($22 million per year for five years) towards increasing capacity to work with P/Ts on the development of comparable indicators and data to better enable health reporting.
• In summary the federal government:
• continues to provide a leadership role in the collection and publication of health information to Canadians (i.e., Statistics Canada and CIHI reports);
• has made significant investments in CIHI so that more and improved data is available to Canadians and P/Ts. Budget 2007 provided an additional $22 million to CIHI ($110 million over five years) in large part to continue development of comparable health indicators.  This is in additional to $35 million per year in renewed Roadmap I and II + funding.  This brings the total annual funding to CIHI to $81 million;
• is leading by example through the Federal Report on Comparable Health Indicators, which has been published bi-annually since 2002 to report on the accord commitments; and most recently, is participating on an F/P/T task group to develop comparable Aboriginal health data and indicators.