The best-laid plans : health care's problems and prospects / Lawrie McFarlane and Carlos Prado.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McFarlane, Lawrie.

Contributor:

Prado, C. G.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Health care reform--Canada.

Health care reform.

Medical care--Canada.

Medical care.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (213 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Montreal ; Ithaca, N.Y. : McGill-Queen's University Press, c2002.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Is health care like the BC Ferry Service or Ontario Hydro? Lawrie McFarlane and Carlos Prado argue that health care is being treated as though it were just another public utility and that the present crisis in medicare has developed precisely because of this approach. In The Best-Laid Plans they contend that what health care needs is less centralized management and the restoration of empowerment to both patients and care-givers. Contrary to recent attempts to reform health care, which have been based on the assumption that all health care needs is better management, McFarlane and Prado contend that what separates health care from other public services is the complex relationships between the service providers (doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, etc.) and their clients (patients), and the tendency for these relationships to evolve in unpredictable ways. Using Michael Foucault's "genealogical" and "ethical" analyses to explain the unpredictable nature of interactions in a high stakes, emotionally loaded environment, the authors demonstrate how planning, administration, delivery, and reform of a basic public service have gone wrong.

Contents:

Front Matter

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

Some Theory

Health Care and Our Theoretical Base

Health Care and Power

Health Care and Chaos

Chaos, Power, and Ethics

The Practice

The Origins and Pathology of Crisis

The Denial of Crisis

The Orthodox Approach to Health Care Reform

How Medicare Works

The Right to Health Care: The Legal Context

The Right to Health Care: The Historical Context

The Privatization Alternative

A New Approach to Managing Health Services in Canada

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [187]-192) and index.

ISBN:

1-282-86046-1

9786612860461

0-7735-7021-7

OCLC:

929120882