Shifting traditional healthcare paradoxes—The case for true system transformation

Abstract

Although national spending on healthcare has progressed on an upward trend over several decades, issues regarding performance remain. Challenges such as access to specialist care and maternal and infant mortality rates contributed to Canada’s recent ranking of ninth among 11 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries for overall health system performance. Although disruptive transformation is required to resolve our chronic performance issues, effective change cannot be realized without addressing the foundational elements of patient-centred care, interprofessional care, and system integration. Inspired by examples of innovative disruption in other jurisdictions and industries, these three concepts are outlined as the core ingredients for healthcare transformation and describe how they currently function in a paradoxical manner—as self-contradictory statements which in reality are not executed to their true meaning. This article illustrates how improvements in health system performance are hinged to the need to rectify and fuse these three mutually inclusive and inseparable concepts.