About 8,000 lives could be saved each year in Ontario if the province did a better job managing chronic diseases such as diabetes, asthma and heart disease, a new report says.
The Ontario Health Quality Council says in its that one in three Ontarians suffers from a chronic disease.
"This is our number one concern this year -- Ontario is failing to meet the chronic disease challenge," council chairman Ray Hession said at a press conference on Tuesday.
"Fewer than half of chronic disease patients in this province get the care they need."
The report says less than half of Ontarians with diabetes have their blood sugar under control and just 28 per cent with both diabetes and high blood pressure have their blood pressure under control.
The council's second biggest concern was access to health care. The group found 800,000 residents don't have a family doctor, and half of them have stopped looking.
Further, more than 60 per cent of Ontarians can't get an appointment to see their doctor within two days of becoming sick, which causes unnecessary suffering and worry, the report says.
The council says the provincial government needs to speed up implementation of electronic health records to better manage patient care.
"Last week my car dealer sent me a reminder that my car was due for servicing," said council CEO Dr. Ben Chan.
"Yet if a patient with diabetes misses a regularly scheduled blood test, that can slip by unnoticed for months, and that's exactly what our report is showing. Information systems can help ensure things don't slip through the cracks."
A spokeswoman for Health Minister George Smitherman pointed out the province has promised to have electronic health records by 2015 and has spent millions of dollars towards helping patients with chronic diseases.
In the March budget, the province earmarked $47 million this year for electronic health systems, including a registry for diabetics to help them manage their disease with their health-care provider, said Laurel Ostfield.
"While we acknowledge there's definitely work to do, we are targeting diabetes as a priority because we want to be able to take the lessons that we learned and apply it to other chronic diseases as we go forward,'' she said.
The report also found wait times are coming down for cataract surgery, knee and hip replacements and cancer surgery, but not for MRI scans.
With a report from CTV Toronto's Paul Bliss and files from The Canadian Press
