Canada’s health care system under the microscope
Posted Jan 20, 2011 9:46 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
If you think Canada has the best health care in the world, think again.
A Maclean’s magazine cover story says our system is in big trouble.
A recent survey of developed countries puts Canada at the bottom of the list in terms of timeliness and quality of care.
So even though we take so much pride in our health care system, it’s actually pretty mediocre.
Ken MacQueen, who is behind the Maclean’s magazine six-part series on the health care crisis, said the problem starts with our maxed out emergency rooms.
“They wait hours and hours and hours, sometimes six hours, sometimes eight hours, sometimes more. The overburden staff there, they can’t always determine who can wait and who needs help immediately, so there are a distressing number of deaths,” he said.
The article lists many deadly examples, including last February at a hospital in Montreal, Que., where a 75-year-old man died sitting beside a nursing triage station, as his daughter banged on the glass trying to get someone’s attention.
But, MacQueen said the problems cascade right through the system.
“When it comes to things like MRI’s in Canada, we’ll wait maybe two months to get that diagnosis. In Europe, you know, you’ll get it within a week. So it makes a difference in that time if you have a tumour growing, it could be fatal,” he said.
MacQueen said we are delusional about our health care system.
“Console ourselves in the fact ‘well it’s substantially better and fair and more accessible than our American neighbours,’ but really, when you compare to places like the Netherlands and the U.K., we really don’t fair all that well,” he said.
MacQueen said we have an expensive and complex system that cost us over $190 billion in 2010.
It’s not something you can turn around on a dime, but he said we really do need to take a hard look at the service it’s providing our citizens.
