Healthcare Renewal as an Economic Strategy: From Ideas to Execution

Takeaways from the Canadian Club Toronto panel on the economic imperative for healthcare renewal

2024 was the biggest election year in human history. Half of the world’s population, nearly 3.7 billion people, had the opportunity to vote. Healthcare consistently ranked among the top three issues at the polls. That says something concrete: people are making decisions based on whether they can access care.

In February, Kathryn and I attended the Canadian Club panel on healthcare renewal, and that global context shaped how I heard the conversation. The speakers were not arguing that Canada lacks a strong healthcare system. If anything, the opposite. Canada has the capability, values, and willingness to adopt better approaches. The gap is execution.

A simple example makes that gap clear: we are still faxing information around. oo much care delivery still depends on fragmented handoffs, manual processes, and workflows that pull clinical time away from patients. The result is a system that feels strained even when the intent, funding, and frontline talent are there.

Here are the three ideas that stuck with me, and my thoughts.

Healthcare renewal is an economic strategy, not just a fiscal problem

Healthcare spending already consumes 30-40% of provincial budgets, crowding out other priorities. The instinct is to treat that as a cost problem. The panel reframed it as a competitiveness problem: a system that improves access and outcomes also supports labour force participation, productivity, and long-term prosperity.

That mindset shift is worth stating plainly. Instead of “we need a strong economy to fund healthcare,” it becomes “we need a strong healthcare system to sustain a strong economy." The goal is not simply to spend less. It is to deliver better health and more capacity per dollar. That changes what counts as a good investment.

Workforce is the constraint; productivity is the unlock

Canada cannot hire its way out of this under today’s operating model. Healthcare capacity is fundamentally human, and when the workforce is strained, system performance follows.

But workforce is not only about headcount. It is also about how clinical time is used. Ontario family doctors have reported spending 19 hours per week on administrative tasks. National CMA survey work tells a similar story, with respondents estimating that nearly half of their administrative time is unnecessary. Desk work is eating clinical capacity.

Nursing came up as a central example. If frontline roles are unsafe, unsustainable, or overloaded, access and outcomes deteriorate regardless of how many new initiatives get launched. The implication is practical: innovation that adds work or complexity will not scale. Innovation that gives time back to care can. That is the filter.

Connected care is the model; outcomes measurement is the discipline

The strongest takeaway from the panel was that the path forward requires an operating model shift. Connected care means a digital front door that routes people to the right level of care, upstream prevention that reduces avoidable acute visits, and virtual monitoring that helps keep patients stable outside the hospital. To put a number on the opportunity, it is estimated that 1 in 7 emergency department visits are for conditions that could have been managed in primary care.

But none of this works if information does not flow or if the system does not measure what it is trying to improve. That means tracking outcomes, not just activity: whether preventable hospital use declines, whether continuity improves, and whether care is actually coordinated across settings. Measurement is not reporting. It is what makes implementation stick.

What this means for early-stage health investing

At Amplify, this reinforces what we look for: solutions that reduce administrative burden, improve navigation and continuity, enable interoperable data flow, and tie directly to measurable outcomes. The bar is not novelty. It is whether a solution integrates into real workflows, defines its data requirements, and can prove it gives time back to care.

For builders: show the workflow wedge, the integration path, and the outcome moved. For system partners: scale what works, reduce pilot purgatory, and commit to implementation with outcome accountability built in.