Hard times lead to innovation, says a University of Saskatchewan historian.
Speaking to an international conference on the role of health co-operatives in health care, Brett Fairbairn said creativity accompanies adversity.
For example, the doctors’ strike in Saskatchewan in 1962 led people to create health co-ops that worked with doctors who believed in offering nonprofit services that were based on a community’s needs. The new service helped establish the Canadian medicare system of universal free public health coverage supported by taxes.
Fairbairn listed five innovations that came out of the Saskatchewan co-op model:
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- Alternative methods of paying doctors. Community health co-ops used contracts, salaries and voluntary money pooling arrangements. However, the resolution of the doctors’ strike left in place the fee-for-service system still used by today’s medicare.
- An interprofessional approach that treats patients using social workers, counselors, nutritionists, therapists and nurse practitioners as well as doctors.
- A focus on health education and promotion through newsletters, workshops and self-help groups.
- At-cost drugs with a dispensing fee.
- Outreach programs in the community such as foot care, aboriginal liaison, transportation for seniors, methadone replacement therapy and support for child care and women’s shelters.
Fairbairn said these services wouldn’t be offered by a private doctor’s office.
He also said that a 1990 study, the only one done of the consequences of such innovations, found that co-op clinic patients cost the public health system 17 percent less because of lower drug costs and fewer hospitalizations.
