Number of Canadians who give up and leave ERs over wait times has increased fivefold
Number of Canadians who give up and leave ERs over wait times has increased fivefold
The number of Canadians who visit emergency departments across the country only to give up and leave before they receive any care has increased more than fivefold, according to new data collected by CTV News.
It's crazy that over the last decades, conservatives have fought tooth and nail against any foreign aid or immigration under the false assertion that "we need to take care of our own", meanwhile any time they have any freedom to do so, they decidedly "take care of our own" less and less.
And yet Doug Ford has a majority in Ontario, Tim Houston has a majority in Nova Scotia, Danielle Smith has a majority in Alberta, Scott Moe has a majority in Saskatchewan, and Bill Oliver has a majority in New Brunswick.
Who's voting for these troglodytes? Who's looking at the options of "a better future for real people, or a worse future for real people" and choosing the latter? Surely it's not all just in the name of bad memes and "owning the libs"... right?
They're idiots. The answer is idiots. People that will half ass argue "politics" with you for 110 seconds before cutting you off and saying "look I don't care about politics or follow it as closely as you". They're voting straight ticket. They're voting in every election. They only care about optics and identity politics. They don't fact check shit, they don't care about policy. They just care about sound bites and headlines.
1984 and Idiocracy are more similar than one realizes as they both turned out to be prophetic.
we need to take care of our own
They do mean this. "Their own" just refers to anyone living off of investment or property income, with a seven-plus-figure net worth. Context is important.
Oh, the Conservatives take care of their own all right. Just what “their own” actually is has nothing to do with what they say in public.
Could they perhaps say whatever they wanna say until they see financial numbers in front of them?
I reckon all the smartest Canadians live in America. 😓
Can you elaborate?
Canadians who think the USA have a better medical system than Canada have never had to deal with American insurance. Any criticism wrt wait times and staffing that can be levelled at Canada can also be applied to the US. The primary difference is that in the US you are paying through the nose for the privilege.
Unless you are rich, then I imagine it is fantastic.
I live in Québec.
If you want to go to a walk-in medical clinic without an appointment and see a doctor for an emergency, you have to register for an appointment online on a government website. Yes. You take an appointment for a no-appointment walk-in clinic emergency visit.
You have to know when EACH clinic posts its schedule for the next day (none of them post at the same time btw) so you can log in and TRY to get an appointment. But the system is so clogged up that it's nearly impossible to get an appointment.
But I found a hack.
If you go to the emergency at the HOSPITAL - which doesn't require an appointment - you can ask at the triage if you can be given an appointment the next day at a clinic near your home. They apparently have a priority access in the appointment system and can give you one. This way you wait one hour tops, and you get an appointment to see a doctor. That's how I've done it the last couple of times.
In addition, in Québec we used to have local neighborhood public clinics called CLSC. They used to be like mini hospitals with a few services like the possibility of getting X-rays for example. If you needed to see a doctor, your could walk in, register and within a few hours you'd have seen a doctor and got the prescriptions, services or references you needed and that was it. You would RARELY go to the hospital for an emergency thanks to this.
Over time these CLSC clinics were downsized, and defunded and basically reduced to only services that can be provided by nurses, like taking blood samples and vaccines and a few services for old people. This happened over time thanks to heavy austerity measures from the provincial Liberal party that was in power for about 15 years with a neo-conservative leader and then ending up with an actual doctor as the premier who rigged the system to enable doctors to have their own private clinics and giving all doctors huge pay raises before getting voted out.
I bet Douggy and his Private hospital friends are dancing right now... on the 2B+ dollars that hasn't been spent.
I'm in the U.S and have walked out a couple times.
In the longer term, I have a leukemia condition. It took five months to get an MRI and get someone to read the results. By that time the conditions had cleared up.
But there are a lot of conditions that can kill you in five months.
Meanwhile all conservatives want to privatize healthcare because they think Americans walk in, pay $100, and get seen within 5 minutes.
I try to tell them that they have the same wait times and pay thousands. At least in Canada we don't leave the ER with a bill. They don't listen, though.
Because from their point of view that's how it works. They know rich people and rich people pay get seen or have the procedure quickly and pay alot.
But the US system is so much better because profit.
/s
A part of our heritage
At the least we need more walk-in clinics/urgent care with Nurse Practitioners, actually open and staffed. If you want to go really crazy make sure they have doctors, and if you are truely insane enough to fund a functioning healthcare system, make sure people have access to a family doctor to start with.
If you're leaving you don't need to be there in the first place.
I went a couple months ago, waited 2 hours, and then was hospitalized for a week.
My girlfriend went 4 days ago. Waited 3 hours for stitches.
If you're able to leave, you never should've come in the first place.
In a certain number of cases, but there's also cases where you have symptoms which could go either way and you could be walking away to your own grave or greatly aggravating a condition that could have been minimized with prompt analysis and treatment.
Sure that wound will likely still heal with tape rather than stitches, that might be a bad sprain, that puking and blurred vision might just be migraine symptoms, and the problem moving your left arm might just be a pulled muscle from sleeping wrong.
Or, you might leaving and further stressing a fractured bone, poisoning, and a stroke.
Not everyone comes into the ER dripping blood or with a piece of rebar through their chest.
LMAO I love conservatives
The conservatives in Canada are switching people to a biosimilar insulin to save money. They save $2 per pen. The kicker? A vast majority of people are noticing that the biosimilar doesn't work as good, and they need 2-3x more units to get the same effect.
Now I'm no mathematician, but there goes your $2 savings when someone is using 2-3x more pens than they were.
Maybe it actually will over time as that will likely be new doctors, nurses, paramedics, techs etc.
How else are you going to leave the ER if not by a medical doctor from India providing Uber service?
This is a symptom of a twofold problem. First, additional staffing and resources for ERs would help to reduce wait times, but I think the more important issue is lack of primary care, which would help patients avoid needing to go to the ER in the first place.
I'm not much of a fan of the way the article is written. Of course there are going to be some cases where a LWBS has serious complications, but locally (and anecdotally), our ER seems to operate more as a walk in clinic at times, and doctors will often see more patients there than they would in a typical clinic day. I feel like the non-emergent visits are likely a considerable part of the 6.8% LWBS rate, and could be offset by a better supply of family physicians. Unfortunately, at least in Saskatchewan, that would require a government willing to do anything whatsoever to help the healthcare system.
What action(s) would the government take to help the supply of family physicians? (disclaimer: I'm asking out of ignorance and curiosity. I solemnly swear I am not a conservative sea lion or provocateur).
It's unfortunate you have to make that distinction, but thank you.
It's definitely a complex issue, but I think a few things could help in my experience as the spouse of a physician in rural SK with an engineering background.
If I had to boil it down, I'd say those who make decisions in government have a complete lack of understanding of the day to day operations and expenses of rural physicians. A government rep was flabbergasted when she heard that family physicians often have several hours of non-patient facing time in a day when she asked why clinics can't be open 8-5 in a recent meeting. A 6-hour clinic day would often produce 2 hours of paperwork, or you'd need to leave 1 weekday for paperwork if you worked the other 4 seeing patients. Yet, given this lack of understanding, they still refuse to pay doctors for their time to meet to discuss these issues.