Government Bafflegab
So what are we all worried about in Canada, and particularly in the Province of Ontario? We think our universal health care system is in a parlous state of decreptitude, that we are not being well served by a system that has become too bogged down in bureaucracy, too inefficient, too costly, too slow in servicing our needs, too (dare we say it) undependable.We're proud of the universality of our health care system; with the thought that any citizen anywhere within the country, in any province, can receive quality health care when and as required, second to none. And we certainly can, if we compare such services or lack of same in most other countries of the world. But we're a wealthy country, with a much vaunted record of social stability and progressiveness. On the health care issue and its functionality we appear to be lacking progress.
The creaky old system has been tampered with by government in a manner that has been truly deleterious. Decades earlier, governments decided that Canada had more medical doctors than the population required, and that it would be prudent to cut back on enrolment in medical schools. The result now is that there is an inordinate number of Canadians and Canadian families without benefit of a family doctor.
Less than a decade ago, governments in some parts of Canada decided that there were too many hospitals, too many hospital beds, entirely too many medical-health-benefit services available to Canadians which had no direct benefit to the health care system. The system was consuming too much of the tax base, and efficiencies should be made. Those efficiencies included shutting down community hospitals and integrating those that were spared from the cutting block into one giant entity whose geographic parts would be designated to support discrete services.
No longer would there be community hospitals offering full services, but rather combined institutions affiliated under the rubric of of centrality with its offshoots specializing as various treatment centres, while the main institution would be tasked with excellence in key areas of specific research and allied medical treatment such as heart and cancer.
And while they were at it, these futurist-thinking brilliant minds felt that there were too many beds, underutilized and unneeded, so they too were cut back. Then it was the turn of the nurses, those overworked and under-appreciated health care professionals who were the mainspring of any hospital's success, and overstaffing was deemed to be another problem, so nurses were let go. Drugs were becoming too costly, consuming too much of the available health care dollars, so some critical medications and procedures were removed from the drug formulary. Need a critical test, require vital medication? Pay for it yourself. If you can.
Ontario now has too few hospitals, too few beds, too few operating theatres, too few diagnostic tools, too few nurses, too few technologists, too few doctors. The province has not, after all, saved tax dollars in this far-reaching initiative for efficiencies. Costs have, inexplicably, risen, and services have fallen. Tax-payers and those requiring medical intervention and health services have been poorly served.
What is the Province of Ontario spending money on these days? Well, encouraging medical specialists to spend longer hours at the office, seeing a greater number of patients in an attempt to stretch the expertise that is still available. Of course, this is costing more tax dollars which might be better spent on a greater number of doctors being available, coming fresh and perky out of the crucible of higher education through medical schools.
Where else is the Province of Ontario spending money to make the system a far better one for you and for me? Advertising, that's where. A no-brainer, that one. Print something in a newspaper and if it's there, concrete, in black and white, people will believe it, right? These half-page advertisements are so cozy and warm:
"Right now across Ontario there are more nurses" - with a photograph of a smiling nurse.Say it and it becomes reality. That's why nurses are still overworked; technologists have a long waiting list for their services; doctors are so busy with all the patients their practise can possibly serve that they have been forced through repeated requests from desperate people to compile lists of those needing to be taken on board; people wait endlessly long months for critical diagnoses and therapeutic procedures.
"There are more MRI technologists" - accompanying photograph of a confident technician.
"And there are more doctors ready to help you" - yes, there's the photograph of a doctor - available and ready.
"So you spend less time waiting" - ta-dum! three empty chairs in a waiting room.
Talk to the people who've been admitted to hospital on their designated operating day, have been ferried up to the operating room, and then been told that sorry, it's just not going to happen; no operating room available, we'll have to re-book.
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, October 05, 2006
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