We found the vast majority of Canadians who are already in poor health say the quality of the care they personally receive is good to excellent, but roughly half feel that fundamental changes are needed to improve our health care system.

It also showed, however, that the 14% of patients surveyed who had experienced a medical error in their care in the previous two years - things like incorrect tests or receiving the wrong medication - gave significantly lower ratings to the quality of their care compared to those who did not report experiencing an error.

Survey results suggested that fundamental changes to the health care system would need to include effective policies around patient safety and specific strategies to reduce errors, both in hospital and in community care settings.