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D LeTouzé

Publications and source records attributed to D LeTouzé.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Facilitating the involvement of Canadian health care facilities in health promotion.

Following a brief background of Canadian health promotion policy efforts, the Canadian health care system, and a discussion of the reasons for increased interest in the area, two health promotion and health care facility initiatives undertaken by the Canadian Hospital Association are presented. The first describes the findings of a 1986 survey of Canadian hospitals (n = 732) in terms of the level of commitment to health promotion, the future priority of health promotion for four target groups, the types of programs and activities, and the perceived obstacles to implementing health promotion. The results suggest that although health promotion is considered an important role for hospitals, most health promotion activities in Canadian hospitals can be classified as ad hoc. The second initiative presents the summary of a focus group meeting which was established to further the organized involvement of health care facilities in health promotion. Findings are described as follows: a shared vision of health and health promotion; the role of health care facilities in health promotion; and the implementation of health promotion in health institutions. These efforts culminated in the striking of a national working group by Health and Welfare Canada to develop a document which will serve as a framework for health promotion in health care facilities.

Canada↗

Hospital bed planning in Canada: a survey analysis.

The need to plan health and especially hospital care delivery systems is becoming more critical in this period of severe financial constraints and even cutbacks of services. This article reports on a survey of hospital planning norms and bed requirements methodologies in Canada conducted in 1977 and 1980. The comparison and assessment of approaches to bed need determination in the Canadian provinces, together with some recommendations, are preceded by a review of basic hospital planning methods and their use in a number of selected countries. The literature review and the analysis conducted reveal that the "formula method" (beds per 1000 population) is the most common approach used to define and to allocate the "optimum" number of beds in the countries reviewed and in Canada. Despite its shortcomings, this method appears to have many advantages (e.g., simplicity, equity, flexibility). In general, provincial authorities use similar factors in the calculation of the number of beds to be provided, the most important ones being the size of the projected geographic population or population served by age groups. The acute care bed guidelines in Canada range from 3.5 per 1000 population in southern Ontario to 5.0 in Saskatchewan and Alberta. Extended care bed guidelines are much more spread between provinces. The analysis underlines the difficulties faced by the planner and the researcher in comparing bed guidelines due to significant definition and content differences between provinces. It finally leads to the observation that hospital planning remains arbitrary and appears to be more designed to ration the supply of services and to contain overall expenditures than to really try to meet the "need" of the population for hospital services.

Bed Occupancy↗