Canada’s ER NIGHTMARE
This year, medical officials have been participating in an inquiry into the death of Brian Sinclair — the man who died in 2008 despite waiting 34 hours in a Winnipeg emergency room. The story resonates greatly with my family.
My mom has had some, let’s say, engine trouble with her health recently. Last week, after 11 hours at Sunnybrook hospital in Toronto, my wheelchair-bound, vomiting, desperately ill and yes, Canadian-taxpaying mother finally left that facility’s ER unseen and untreated, as she couldn’t take the wait anymore. She was told that doctors were seeing only more pressing cases — the ones who were dying.
Needless to say, tending to the dying is critical. But what about the rest, who are not quite in their death throes but still urgently need care? Do we just sod them? Appallingly, for my near-octogenarian mother, this wait was not an exception. Similar obscenely long hours were logged in different Toronto hospital ERs throughout her illness.
Don’t get me wrong: When (and if ) my mom got the care she needed, it was always top level. But it is how that care is delivered that has me agreeing with the lawyers testifying that Mr. Sinclair’s Charter rights were violated during the lengthy period before he was found rigor mortis in his wheelchair.
I grew up in Canada, but now live in the UK. I have three children here in London,
It’s madness that I can pay to mutilate my body so it could look better in a bikini, but I cannot pay to obtain chemotherapy
so the public health system in this country is critical to us. The few times we needed an ambulance or hospital, we were there in minutes, treated, patched up and sent home within a reasonable time frame. Long waits in UK hospitals are considered unpardonable. A post office queue? Yes, but never at the hospital. If this situation in the ERs here approximated that of Canada, you could expect a mass revolt against the politicians responsible.
The problem with Canadians is that the so-called “universal” health care system is so vaunted that it has become a mystical, fabled element of Canadian identity. Many are blind to its flaws.
Years back, when I worked at a Montreal think tank called the Institute for Research on Public Policy, its president, the brilliant Monique Jérôme-Forget (who went on to become Quebec’s Finance Minister), wrote Who is the Master?: A Blueprint for Canadian Health Care reform. The book outlined how Canada could approach a two-track health system and proposed solutions to a host of problems. To our amazement, the response was harsh to the point of vitriol, the intent misread: Naysayers feared a system in which only the rich would be assured of top-flight health care.
The episode exposed some very provincial, narrow-minded thinking. A two-track system has nothing to do with rich versus poor. My family are as middle-class as they come, but we still would have insured ourselves, or happily pooled our resources, dipped into our savings — even gone into debt — to have my mother seen to properly. Don’t most Canadians at least want these sort of options?
Here’s a question: Why can I pay to have my boobs surgically enhanced whereas I can’t pay to have, say, a life-saving triple bypass surgery? Last time I checked, having a set of jugs installed or fat sucked out me still requires surgical instruments, anaesthetic, doctors and nurses. Though a bypass could save my life, I doubt a set of 36DD’s ever will. It’s madness that I can pay to mutilate my body so it could look better in a bikini, but I cannot pay to obtain chemotherapy.
If we aren’t ready for a two-track system, how about some interim management solutions? Communication is a start: By law, patients should be kept informed, on the hour, of their wait-time status at the ER after a certain period has elapsed. A little comfort, pat on the head or lollipop could go a long way.
Or how about hiring more medical staff? And if there are not enough homegrown doctors and nurses available for hire, cherry-pick from the best internationally.
My mother got lucky: She didn’t pay the ultimate sacrifice like Mr. Sinclair. But elsewhere across Canada, the sickest and the elderly continue to be at risk. Our politicians have to sort it our. Stat.