Dr. Tara Kiran spoke with CTV News about how different types of virtual care impact downstream healthcare use and outcomes for patients. Dr. Kiran is an author on a new study in JAMA Network Open that found that those who saw their family doctor virtually were less likely to visit the emergency department in the next week, compared to those who had a virtual care visit with a doctor they had never met before.
Author: Samira Prasad
Virtual medical care works better with family doctor: study
66 percent of patients are more likely to visit the emergency department within seven days after receiving virtual care from a doctor who is not their family physician. Mark McAllister of CityNews spoke with Dr. Tara Kiran about her recent study looking at virtual care.
Toronto’s homeless residents and frontline workers brace for bitter winter
Research by Dr. Carolyn Snider found that cold-weather related emergency department visits by people who are unhoused have gone up 68% in the past five years. She recently spoke with The Canadian Press about what is needed to address this.
Calls to end ‘race correction’ in health care
Common diagnostic health tests have long been interpreted differently for Black patients — a practice called “race correction,” which has systematically denied access to timely and sometimes life-saving care. The Current’s Matt Galloway talks to LLana James, co-chair of the Canada-US Coalition to End Race Correction in Healthcare; and Dr. Nav Persaud, the Canada Research Chair in Health Justice at St. Michael’s Hospital in Unity Health Toronto.
Citizens panel recommends Indigenous health department
This article by the Winnipeg Free Press covers some of the recommendations put forward from Dr. Tara Kiran’s OurCare Manitoba Panel. The creation of an Indigenous health department and a provincial health ombudsperson are among 37 of the recommendations made.
Can OECD Countries Help Canada Improve Primary Care Access?
Dr. Tara Kiran spoke with Medscape about her recent research looking at Canada’s primary care system in comparison to other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, and potential structures that would work in Canada.
‘We want to keep people alive’: Outreach workers call for tools to combat toxic new street drugs
CBC News spoke with Karen McDonald, lead of MAP’s Drug Checking Service about the challenges of fighting the overdose crisis when the drugs are rapidly changing, and the importance of drug checking. “It’s important for people to know what it is that they’re using, just so that they can make safer choices,” she says.
Health care in Canada could be more like Norway’s, with some improvements: study
Dr. Tara Kiran spoke with CTV News about how Canada is trailing behind other Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries when it comes to both the number of physicians relative to the population, and its spending on primary care, according to a new analysis published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
Opinion: Fixing the primary care crisis is underway. Now we need action
In this op-ed, co-authors Drs. Andrew Pinto and Danielle Martin write about the need to scale up community-governed, primary-care teams to allow family doctors to provide care for more patients with the support of nurses, social workers, pharmacists, dietitians, physiotherapists, and other health professionals.
Canada falls short in several areas of health care in comparison to other OECD countries, report says
Dr. Tara Kiran spoke with The Globe and Mail about a new report published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal which reveals how Canada falls short in several key areas in comparison with nine other Organization for Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Canada has fewer physicians overall per capita, spends less of its total health budget on primary care, and has relatively high maternal- and infant-mortality rates.