After many years of success, EvidenceNetwork.ca is no longer in operation. We would like to thank everyone who has contributed to the organization over the past decade including our dedicated researchers, newspaper editors, readers and funders. However, now it is time to move onto new ways of looking at knowledge mobilization and policy. Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact Shannon Sampert at s.sampert@uwinnipeg.ca.

Ambulance fees are an obstacle on the road to care

Imagine you’re a physician seeing a six month old child in clinic. She has a fever and cough, she’s working hard to breathe and her oxygen levels are falling. You know she needs assessment in the emergency room and requires transportation in an ambulance in case her condition worsens en route. Her family understands the urgency of the situation, but asks, “Could we take her there in our car?”

Are we medicalizing healthy people?

Modern medical practice is engaged in a battle, not for hearts and minds, but for the conversion of perfectly healthy people into patients, labelled “at high risk” of various diseases in the name of prevention.

Double-failing on health

Forty is the new thirty. Orange is the new black. And Failure is the new success.

It seems these days that no success story is complete without a failure (or two) along the way: the bankruptcy that gave birth to a successful company; the entrepreneur who lost it all just before hitting the Fortune 500.

Growing income gap poses a health risk to all

Certain Canadian commentators are bringing forth a strange critique of public health, suggesting that physicians and public health experts, charged with caring for the health of Canadians, should not concern themselves with the root causes of illness and stick to a narrow range of health interventions.

Backgrounder: Surgical wait times for publicly funded health services in Canada

Public opinion polls show many Canadians worry about surgical wait times. Anecdotal media reports and heated political debates encourage this worry. But the question remains: Are Canadians waiting too long for surgery?

Backgrounder: Healthcare with user fees

The most basic way of categorizing healthcare financing is to separate public and private healthcare costs. Public financing includes expenditures from any level of government (financed through taxation) as well as social insurance funds (these are much more widespread in European health care systems, although Workers’ Compensation Boards would be included here).