Department of Economics Lansdowne Lecture - Dr. Erin Strumpf

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MacLaurin (MAC) D283. Can Canadian health systems find their true north?: A roadmap toward value-based, patient-centered, sustainable health systems for the 21 st century The promise of universal public health insurance systems in Canada was made in a different era, and today’s health systems struggle to balance patients’ care experience, health professionals’ wellbeing, population health, equity concerns, and health system costs. While many advocate for a renewed focus on efficiency and sustainability, they mistakenly focus on volume metrics as the relevant measures of health system performance: the number of physicians per capita, the number of hip replacements performed, or the number of people registered with a family doctor, just to name a few. To make concrete progress towards value-based, patient-centred, and sustainable health systems, we must first identify our true north. This reflects the outcomes that matter most to the people the system is intended to serve: patients and the public. Reorienting our health systems towards value instead of volume should be accompanied by concrete indicators of health system performance that reflect value. We cannot simply monitor what is easy to measure – we must measure what matters. These indicators need to be populated with reliable data, monitored over time, and used to evaluate how policies and interventions succeed or fail in helping to move us toward value and sustainability. Making better use of existing models and tools to improve performance o