[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Sign-in] [Mail] [Setup] [Help]
Status: Not Logged In; Sign In
|
Health See other Health Articles Title: Canada's health care system has its problems The Health Council of Canada recently published a report in which they reiterated Canada’s universal, publicly funded health care system is widely viewed as an essential part of a social safety net and a reflection of Canadians’ core values. But they also found that the cost of the system is a constant concern, and many fear that public health care is unsustainable. Negative discussion about health care in Canada tends to focus on a persistent set of problems: access, wait times, and shortages of health care providers. This has been the case in times of good economy and during economic crisis. The 10th annual Health Care in Canada survey confirms that wait times and the shortage of doctors top the list pf concerns voiced by Canadians in 2008. Other issues of concern were timeliness and access to care and environmental health issues such as air and water pollution. Although some Canadians say they have never waited for medical services, complaints about long waiting times have lead virtually every provincial government to publish data on wait times for specific procedures in their province. In 2004 the federal government and all the provincial governments entered into a 10 year plan to achieve significant reductions in wait times for 5 priority areas: * Cancer * Heart * Diagnostic imaging * Joint replacement * Sight restoration (cataract surgery) By 2007, despite government promises and billions of dollars funneled into the Canadian health-care system, "the average patient waited more than 18 weeks between seeing their family doctor and receiving the surgery or treatment they required," said Nadeem Esmail, director of Health System Performance Studies at the independent Fraser Institute. It is difficult to talk about waiting times across the board because of differences in provincial reporting. Waiting times did increase in 7 provinces: Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador. But 4 provinces, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island., showed marked decreases in waiting time. The differences between the provinces may to some extent account for the widely differing opinions expressed by Canadians about their health care system. The shortage of doctors and other health care professionals is the second most problematic issue for Canadians. The lure of more lucrative salaries led to a "brain drain" of professionals to the United States in recent years. Although overall emigration has been relatively small, health care professionals constitute a significant proportion of the public sector workers who have chosen to leave Canada for employment in the United States. Canadian nurses have expressed particular dissatisfactions with the health care system in recent years. They have consistently recommended increasing the number of nurses, improvements in education, and maximizing the scope of practice of nurses.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
|
||
|
[Home]
[Headlines]
[Latest Articles]
[Latest Comments]
[Post]
[Sign-in]
[Mail]
[Setup]
[Help]
|
||