Hospital Information Access Denied

In early April, CBC (Canadian Broadcast Company) launched an investigation into individual hospitals across Canada. ‘Rate My Hospital’ part of the Fifth Estate includes statistics, letter grades and detailed surveys regarding the hospitals closest to you.

In order to access this information CBC asked the Canadian Institute of Health Information – the CIHI receives information directly from the hospitals, which it in turn shares with the public – but when the CIHI went to health officials from provinces across the country they gave a collective “no.”

It gets worse. In Nova Scotia, health minister Kevin McNamara approved the release of data only to revoke his approval six days later:

“In those six days, freedom-of-information documents show that a federal Public Health Agency of Canada employee sent out an email to a network of health ministry officials and experts through the Pan-Canadian Public Health Network with a compiled list of all the provinces and territories’ planned responses to the CBC request.” Credit

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