Is the canadian health care system suffering from abuse? A commentary.

The authors suggest that more attention must be paid to acting on information about the effectiveness of diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, their cost-effectiveness, and their net benefit to Canadians. Canadian health professionals and policy-makers must translate information on ineffective procedures, poor use of effective procedures, and the relative cost of services delivered in different settings by different personnel into changes in use levels and patterns. Another challenge, which involves the general public as well, is to achieve an informed social consensus about the level of health care spending and its distribution across types of services. Education of Canadians, including health professionals, is needed so that they can contribute responsibly and effectively to this change.