The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) will measure Canadians’ access to mental health and addictions services
The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) has announced plans to measure Canadians’ access to mental health and addictions services and to home and community care.
The CIHI will aim to create improved access to services by examining a focused set of indicators to measure progress. The move has been endorsed by federal, provincial and territorial (FPT) health ministers.
Designed to summarize information about health system performance or population health, indicators are measures that provide comparable information and can track changes over time. The CIHI has been collecting, analyzing and publishing data to support health authorities and institutions for nearly 25 years and will work closely with the FPT governments to support the development of these health indicators.
"We are very pleased with the health ministers' endorsement, as it marks a significant step toward gathering the data needed to improve access to services and support in 2 sectors that are clearly important to Canadians," said David O'Toole, President and CEO, CIHI. "We look forward to continuing our efforts with the FPT governments and measurement experts to develop and report indicators that will allow leaders across the health sector to make decisions for the benefit of Canadians."
In the next decade, the CIHI will work with FPT governments to create annual reports on the designated indicators. For community mental health and addictions, the selected set of indicators includes measures related to wait times, early intervention for youth, understanding of services available, access to effective community care, addictions and self-injury, including suicide.
For home and community care, the indicator set includes measures related to wait times, appropriate care settings, effectiveness of home care, caregiver experiences and end-of-life care
In 2019, CIHI will begin annual reporting for the selected indicators where data is currently available. Where required, CIHI will continue to work with FPT governments to define the methodology for indicator calculation and to identify new data sources to enable comparable reporting.
