title: Medical intervention and the effectiveness of the health care delivery system: a Canadian perspective.
abstract: It should be apparent that the accepted paradigm of medical care as high-technology intervention in individual cases is inappropriate for each of the three major causes of mortality and morbidity. Much more can be achieved in lowering the infant mortality and morbidity rate by education and welfare strategies. Accidents and suicides can only be decreased by improving the environment, from both the physical and the psychologic perspectives. Education for working and for living is essential. Medical intervention can provide only a catchment for "failures." The application of the mistaken paradigm of acute care to the domain of chronic illness fosters the view that the health care delivery system is correctly structured and is providing the kind of care that is required. The result is both a complacency about the structure of the system and an insistence on "heroic" measures in "hopeless" cases. In order to rectify the situation in the health care delivery system, two adjustments are necessary: (1) an overall decrease in the cost of existing health care, so that more may be done with limited resources, and (2) a reeducation of both the medical profession and general public, so that a more rational structure may be erected.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Langham
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Flagel
mesh_terms: D001294:Attitude to Health; D002170:Canada; D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000191:economics / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D007226:Infant Mortality; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008017:Life Expectancy; D008019:Life Style; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D011788:Quality of Life