Health Care Practitioners: An Ontario Case Study in Policy Making

by O'Reilly, Patricia

• ISBN13: 9780802044204
• ISBN10: 0802044204
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-05-01
• Publisher: Univ of Toronto Pr

Summary

This study offers the first comprehensive analysis of the emergence of health care practitioners in Ontario. Patricia O'Reilly considers the whole range of Western health professionals, from medical psychologists to podiatrists, examining their roles and relationships in economic, political, judicial, educational, and interest group contexts. Health Care Practitionerstakes as its focus the development of a new regulatory model, the Ontario Regulated Health Professions Act of 1991, and the extensive review of health practitioners that preceded it, namely, the Health Professions Legislation Review of 1983-9. This policy process, which highlighted the relationships that practitioners hold with each other, with the state, and with the public, is placed in both ideational and institutional contexts. Using an interpretive methodology, O'Reilly contrasts health-sector principles of self-governance, rationality, science, and technology with ideational principles of democracy, free-market enterprise, and judicial process. She looks at the emergence of various categories of practitioners, showing how legislative forces have worked to include, exclude, or marginalize them. Her narrative follows the evolution of the professions as a whole from a position of control and hierarchy to one of greater public accountability.

Author Biography

PATRICIA O'REILLY is Assistant Professor, Department of Politics and School of Public Administration, Ryerson Polytechnic University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Abbreviations	xi
Introduction	3	(12)
Historical Patterns of Ontario's Health Professions Legislation: The Embedded, Marginalized, and Excluded	15	(22)
Benefits and Burdens of the New Regulatory Blueprint	37	(16)
The 1960s and 1970s: The Institutionalization of Delivery and Funding	53	(17)
Overview of the Legislation Review Process in the 1980s of the Ontario Health Professions	70	(11)
Expertise Turf Wars	81	(60)
Continuity and Realignment of the Positions of Connection	141	(31)
The Regulated Health Professions Act of 1991	172	(29)
Conclusions from the Story	201	(42)
Notes	243	(102)
Glossary	345