A British Columbia provincial policy that forced people with chronic illnesses such as Crohn’s disease and rheumatoid arthritis to switch to cheaper medications saved the province more than $730-million over five years, according to a new government report.

The B.C. government said Friday that the money freed up through its biosimilar switching plan allowed the province to expand public coverage of other drugs and devices, including Trikafta, a life-changing treatment for cystic fibrosis and continuous glucose monitors for people with diabetes.

Don’t panic! Disease X doesn’t exist yet – but it might one day. Disease X is the label that the World Health Organization uses to refer to some currently unknown infectious condition that is capable of causing an epidemic or – if it spreads across multiple countries – a pandemic. The term, coined in 2017, can be used to mean a newly discovered pathogen or any known pathogen with newly acquired pandemic potential. By the latter definition, covid-19 was the first Disease X. But there could be another in the future.

Non-Paywall Article

An analysis on primary care in Canada, and what we can do to improve it

KEY POINTS

• Canada spends less of its total health budget on primary care than the average among Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries (5.3% v. 8.1%).

• Canada can learn lessons to inform policy on primary care from OECD countries like the United Kingdom, Norway, Netherlands and Finland where more than 95% of the population has a regular primary care clinician or place of care.

• An analysis of these countries shows that those with high rates of primary care attachment have stronger contractual agreements and accountability for family physicians, including where they practise, their scope of practice and who they accept as patients.

• Countries with high rates of primary care attachment have similar numbers of family physicians, but fewer work in walk-in clinics or specialized areas; family physicians are paid by capitation or salary, work in interprofessional teams and have excellent digital tools and information systems.

The article has more, I just pulled the key points section out

Non-Paywall Article

Background: Globally, pharmaceutical companies offer patient support programs in tandem with their products, which aim to enhance medication adherence and patient experience through education, training, support and financial assistance. We sought to identify the proportion and characteristics of such patient support programs in Canada and to describe the nature of supports provided.

I pulled out the infographics for a short TLDR