The Canadian Health Care Delivery System

A health care delivery system is a collection of institutions, organizations, and resources that help specific populations meet their health care needs.

Now, in Canada, the Canada Health Act guides the health care delivery system to provide affordable and accessible care to all citizens through five principles.

The first principle is public administration, where agencies and local authorities deliver health care services on a non-profit basis. The next principle is comprehensiveness, where all medically necessary treatments are covered by insurance without out-of-pocket charges. The third principle is universality which ensures that all residents receive treatment without discrimination due to their race, gender, income, ethnicity, or religion.

The fourth principle is portability, meaning that residents can receive health care in any Canadian province or territory without additional costs. And lastly, the fifth principle is accessibility which guarantees availability of health care services based on medical need, rather than a person’s ability to pay.

Using these principles, each territory or province administers its own separate health care system in institutional settings, such as hospitals or long-term care facilities, as well as community settings, like within a patient’s home or local health clinics.

Now to improve health care delivery and patient outcomes, Canada’s federal, provincial, and territorial governments have adopted a model called Primary Health Care, or PHC.

PHC is different from primary care, which is health care that prevents, diagnoses, and treats diseases. PHC, on the other hand, focuses on the continuum of care throughout the lifespan, across healthcare and non-healthcare settings with the goal of achieving better health for everyone. PHC incorporates a societal approach to address whole-system factors that affect peoples’ health, like housing, income, and education. PHC also takes a proactive approach to health care by focusing on health promotion and disease prevention, like family planning and immunizations, as well as treatment of existing illness, through rehabilitation and palliative care.

As the nurse, you’ll collaborate with health care providers, community members, and patients to provide PHC services that’ll be individualized to the needs of each community. For example, you could administer immunizations to rural communities from a mobile vaccine clinic, whereas, in urban areas, you might administer immunizations from within centers stationed in high-traffic areas, like a subway platform.