SUGAR-COATED TRAUMA
Last week, BC Stealth Minister, Colin Hansen, was found at one of our major hospitals explaining away the old man who had spent days in the hall. It was either New Westminster's Royal Columbian or some similar bunker in the Interior.
Hansen, was as always, smooth and re-assuring. "These things happen and we are working very hard to make sure they don't happen again."
Or homilies to that effect.
A few days later, he was hurrying $1 Million over to St. Paul's Hospital to keep the lights on!
The second largest hospital in the province is crumbling. It is a huff and a puff away from becoming a pile of dust on Burrard Street.
Then, yesterday, the icing on the donut.
Royal Columbian, having run out of room to serve their clients - whom we quaintly like to call medical patients - were being warehoused at the nearby Tim Hortons.
All of which speaks to a major and as yet unaddressed issue.
Has anyone in government or the snivel service given any passing thought to health care planning?
Have they asked themselves a few cogent questions, like, for instance...
How many hospital beds do we have How many do we need? How many will we need next year and five years from now? And where are these beds and these needs? And how much might all of this cost us? And from which magic fountain will we get the gold?
I am sure that, if pressed, the good Minister and his adoring minions will insist that they are indeed all over these concerns. That they are planning up the yin yang.
But we know that is not the case.
Or how else to explain cardio and ostio care in the line that used to serve double doubles?
8 comments:
The projections of the cost of healthcare to the province is un-sustainable. The crush of old people (many of which are new comers and never paid a dime into the system) combined with spiraling medical costs creates a system on failing life support.
We all laugh at "double double" health care, but the way it's going it will be the lucky patients that get to stay in Timmy Ho. The unlucky ones will be asked to wait in their cars in the parking lot for the next available car-hop... I mean nurse.
Luckily I'm mid-30's and
shouldn't need to visit the
hospi-hortons for four decades for chronic problems.
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I'm afraid the plan is to run it into the ground in order to justify selling it off.
The "Eye" spent 7 days in emergency over New Years (damn well near lost my leg!) and had to return 2 times a day ( 2 to 3 hours a session) until mid February for IV treatment and my observations are thus:
It seems all ECU style care homes have rid themselves of expensive doctors and nurses and send patients with a whim of illness, via ambulance, to the nearest emergency room.
About 70% of these patients are returned to their respective care homes after 3 or 4 hours.
In our governments zeal to reduce costs in ECU's and the private sector maintaining their profit levels, by vastly reducing skilled staff (RN's and doctors), they rely on the emergency wards for minor ailments, which could easily have been taken taken care of at their resident ECU or care home.
I think this shuffling elderly patients to save a few bucks at source is greatly distorting our provincial medical services and our ability to provide medical care in this province.
As an aside, except for a few "Nurse Ratchet'" the Emergency staff are superb, dealing with serious medical problems with great efficiency and empathy.
I have been in Canada long enough to remember when there was no government healthcare. We used Cashex.
So the health care system is in trouble. Hmmm?
I have an eye problem and was refered to a specialist in New West. I waited for more than 6 months to see the eye doctor.
(aside. I am 57 years old and born in Vancouver. Worked my entire life in lower mainland)
So I walk into the eye specialists office and am struck by two things.
- I am the only caucasian in the room
-The aged indo canadians might be parents of current tax payers but they certainly havent paid into our system all of their lives.
So is the health care system failing OR have we allowed the imigration policies to destroy our health care system?
I'm moving to new zealand so I had to get several tests done. Each time the doctor "forgot" one thing or another, so I had to return six times, each of which billed to the health care system. Or how about the dentist, different price if insured versus uninsured. My friend, a nurse in the psych ward says the most work she ever does is fill out a form or hand out meds, only makes 44 an hour. Nope, nobody smells anything fishy, standard operating procedure.
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