UK health care reform: Lessons learned

What role should doctors, nurses, social workers and teachers play in reforming health care? The man who helped revolutionize the British health care system will be answering that question at 10 am, Aug. 28, in room 232 of McGill University's Leacock Building, 855 Sherbrooke St. West.

Paul Corrigan, British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Chief Adviser on the National Health Service (NHS), has seen first-hand how health care professionals question whether patient care is undermined by government efforts to make public health, social and educational services more efficient. He will address ways of reconciling this dynamic.

Corrigan helped reform the NHS by, among other things, making hospitals into public service organizations, accountable to the public and free from ministerial control, by designating the best hospitals Foundation Hospitals and granting them greater freedom, particularly in regard to their budgets. Insight into the debate in the UK might be helpful as Canada continues to grapple with how to improve its own overburdened health care system.