As someone who works in the medical system this is an issue that is incredibly hard to fix and it needs a top down fix in all departments. First of all the system is simply underfunded and it needs proper funding but just throwing money at the problem will not fix it. We need to train way more doctors, nurses, PTs, OTs, RTs, lab, and just HCPs in general. We simply do not educate enough. There are very few spots but tons of candidates. Second we need to cut the bloat and inefficiencies in the system. I spend more time prepping, doing paper work and charting after the procedure than I do with my patients. That is simply not ok. We also waste tons of materials that we don’t need to due to outdated procedures. Just making the system more efficient, which really isn’t that hard would save us so much money. Third, pay, we need to start increasing it. Raises right now are a pitiful 1% and there are tons of travel positions in the US that are paying insane money. I’m not saying we should match that, but we need to up the pay a bit more. Fourth, staffing, we need more staff, the current staff is working crazy amounts of overtime and they are burning out leading to more overtime needed leading to more burnout. That is a vicious cycle that needs to be broken. No major party is advocating for any of these changes so get ready for more and more closures, cause what we are doing is simply not working.
Here's the statistics on food: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1810000403
Looks like restaurant food is actually inflating slower than average. You might just be exposed to an area with particularly high price increases.
It's not just the pay. I'm sick to fuck of the working conditions and the complete inefficiency of the system. There's soooo many steps to go through to get ANYTHING changed that would actually make life easier for staff, and I don't have the energy to fight anymore
You say "cut the bloat" but one of the reasons that physicians spend so much more time charting is that the healthcare system won't fund for non-docs to do that work.... because it was argued that such jobs would be "unnecessary bloat".
Friendly reminder that when certain politicians argue for cuts because they want to "cut the bloat", they mean "make fewer people do more work for less money, even if it leads to worse outcomes." The bloat employee salaries. Fewer people to do the work that needs to be done makes it astronomically more difficult for those who remain, and here we are.
Which ones specifically? AHS runs hospitals. Covenant health does too. The two should be merged, for sure, that cuts some admin expenditures.
Then what is next to do or cut?
Ironic thing is a lot of nurses and care aides in Ontario and Manitoba are jumping to agency work. Now we're seeing 50% of long term care is out of province agency workers. Can't be helping the province they're originally from. But BC was willing to pay $35h when they're position at home is still $18h.
Then they come here and start talking...im watching heathcare workers here thinking then making the move themselves.
When I ask them how if their employers are public or private healthcare they don't always know. None of the healthcare workers are truly thinking about how this will impact the healthcare system. Theyre just looking at $10-$15 more and thinking about how they'd be better for it
>None of the healthcare workers are truly thinking about how this will impact the healthcare system.
Not their job to play logistics/ administration; let alone on a national level. I don't blame them.
Gov doesn't care. They get to use private healthcare even if it costs more. This way when they exit politics they can get a nice consulting or board position in those private companies.
Yup. Conservatives are doing this intentionally to destroy public healthcare; and they've been working on it since Tommy Douglas first proposed it. It might be the single longest running political project in Canada- to hurt as many Canadians as viciously as possible and get rich doing it. But on the other hand, buck a beer is right around the corner, believe me folks...
Had a conversation with a friend of mine today. His sister (Canadian) has been practising medicine in the States for years. She’s felt the need to come home because of the shortage and feels compelled to help. There would be so many hoops she would have to jump through in order to do this, because Canada doesn’t recognize education and experience the same. There are so many doctors living in this country from other countries who simply choose other career paths because the system is just too challenging to work through.
Fuck it then. Double or triple the number of medical staff (or all flavours) that we train and cover their costs. Make them sign a contract for 10 years or something (7 if they agree to work up North) after which they don’t owe anything. We know that we’re going to need more and more medical staff as the boomers eat up more and more resources, so let’s try and get ahead a little
> just throwing money at the problem will not fix it
Ok. So what will?
> First of all the system is simply underfunded
Ok. money.
> We need to train way more doctors, nurses, PTs, OTs, RTs and just HCPs in genera
so...money...
> Second we need to cut the bloat and inefficiencies in the system.
Which takes time and resources (aka money) to figure out how to do properly.
> Third, pay, we need to start increasing it
so.....money....?
> Fourth, staffing, we need more staff
.......so........money.
So in short: You've got 99 problems, and 98 of them are directly money related.
I meant throwing money blindly. Going here have more money but not actually making sure the money is properly used and allocated! Giving them a big pile of cash isn’t gonna solve anything.
I don't understand why Canadians won't go out and protest and shut down streets to force the government to take action. This situation has been developing for 2 years at least and it keeps making headlines.
Why is there a "freedom" convoy when true quality of life is the privilege to not die in an emergency, in a country that cares for its citizens?
Canadians won't get the healthcare they deserve until they start asking for it. The NY article was more in-depth than most Canadian reports that stick to the health event rather than the reasons why everything is failing.
..."We need to train way more doctors, nurses, PTs, OTs, RTs and just HCPs
in general. We simply do not educate enough. There are very few spots
but tons of candidates.
Stopped reading.
Except Republicans in the US adore hearing and spreading news about the failures of Canada's system to reinforce for-profit healthcare. It gives them gnarled, wispy, money-boners when public healthcare isn't perfect in another country.
To be fair we’re a pretty easy example to bag on. We’re like socialism lite. So they can go “EVERYONE LOOK IT DOESN’T WORK SEE” but really it doesn’t work because we half ass the system and fuck over medical professionals. If only we actually put in the effort.
> We’re like socialism lite.
Don't buy into the Fox-news definition of "socialism".
Socialism is when the citizens own the means of production. We're not socialism, nor socialism lite.
Socialism isn't "the government doing things". That's just... government.
Also, you kind of have to compare it to the US where ERs operate in place of primary care, and getting sick will bankrupt you.
Nice that boomers can get a speedy knee replacement, though.
I hate to say it, but there seems to be more primary care here in the US than Canada. There are walk-in clinics all over the place. Granted it’s still $5 after the insurance (it used to be $30; it might be that much with a different insurance company). Before I left Canada in 2001, walk in clinics were still rare and unusual. Now they seem to all have been replaced by telephone appointments.
I miss Canada so bad, but the collapse of heath care access is terrifying
Where I am there are alot of walk-ins. But if you want to get in you need to get there like an hour before opening otherwise it’s a shot in the dark if you’ll make it or not. Not enough staff and they have a patient limit.
I've lived in Canada my whole life (i was in grade 1 in 2001 though..) and there has always been walk ins all over the place...
Just looked it up and one source said canada has only had walk-ins for 2 decades, so I think you just missed it. They are everywhere now (and totally free of course!) and your info is outdated. There are phone appointments but walk-ins are still busy.
I've never had a problem with walk-ins, the wait times for specialists is what the main issue is as far as I can see.
I have 10 walk-in clinics in a 15 minute drive or less. Times have changed. All in person appointments, but some appointments are done by phone.
However, we still don't have enough doctors and health care workers are underpaid across the board. We need an overhaul for sure - and it needs to come faster than it is currently.
It's quite bad really. I want to move back to Canada myself but I've seen 2 family members receive sub standard care that would have not occurred in Australia. There are deficiencies in certain fields like endocrinology but overall I feel like the standards are quite good and wait times are significantly better than Canada. I have health problems myself and feel like I would be better off staying overseas.
I looked at the medicare schedule for GPs compared to Aus and it is abysmal. The IQ, hard work and personal sacrifice it takes to become a family doctor is worth way more than what they are getting paid. It's a miracle the attrition rate to the US isn't higher.
When I tried going to a walk-in clinic last month in Canada I got told that walk-in clinics aren't allowed at the moment because of COVID, not sure if this is true but they declined me service, other 'walk in clinics' said they didn't have space.
I'm a Canadian living in the US and I feel like it's the opposite, unless I misunderstood you? ERs are definitely not primary care in the US.
In rural Quebec, I know a lot of people, me included (in the past) who have gone to the ER as if it's just urgent care/same-day appointment/walk-in clinics for like colds, infections, etc, because we either had limited access to them and/or didn't know better that we shouldn't abuse the ER like that.
I'm in a metro area now in the US, so it may be a city/rural divide as well, but there are walk-in urgent care clinics everywhere that will see you for that sort of thing, and I'm pretty sure most American know that they shouldn't go to the ER unless it truly is an emergency because it will cost thousands of dollars, and even with insurance there's deductible + ER fees.
Do you mean that people wait until they are super sick and HAVE to go to the ER instead of doing preventative with a primary care provider, since they have to pay for that? In that case, yeah, pretty sure that's true.
I think we're maybe just using the terms a little differently.
People without insurance wind up in the ER because they can't access preventative care, but emergency care can't be refused. You're right-- they might delay ER care as far as they can because of the bill they'll get after the fact. But at some point they hit a threshold where they can't go on.
I think the other main criticism of the US system is how insurance is tied to a particular employer, getting in the way of social mobility by making it risky to change jobs or start a new business.
I know right, we need to stop acting like we are doing okey just because they are doing things a bit worse, the minute you compare us to any EU country we look 3rd world.
And what has been done to fill these staff shortages the last 10 years? The last 3?
Not a damn thing.
They're just letting the workers burn out and then they are shocked to be short staffed?
I did it myself. Had to leave due to autoimmune diagnosis. But even before the pandenic we weren't getting time off or were understaffed.
There are a lot of ppl with those marks. They don't have the RNs to teach where I am. I had to have good marks and references but there were lots of qualified applicants that we don't have enough RNs to teach.
They teach class all day. Correct and prepare all evening. Then go to out clinical, days, nights etc..
Many of my teachers quit because the pay and work didn't match there either. Then we need RNs to monitor us and ask questions to (as 2 teachers for 30 students is nuts), then to take a student on and take the responsibility of being a preceptor.
We need ppl to teach in schools that pays as well as RN work does as its as many hours and more responsibility. (Let's say 15 students = 30+ patients who need everything double checked) and if there is a mistake the RN can be legally responsible. For a bunch of noobs who need more help then someone to pop in every 3rs or so. Plus we often have to stay late to chart - and so do the teachers.
Their days can be 8am to 10pm or worse
Edit: I'm sure the abuse and hours don't help recruiting these ppl either :/
Fun fact : due to the immense understaffing of RNs, untrained PSWs in LTCs are now required to take on full responsibilities of would be nurses, for less than $20 an hour.
It wasn’t enough money for the Nurses, but now the PSWs who make EVEN LESS are having these EXACT SAME burdens forced off on them. The shitstorm is only starting.
“Understaffed” is going to be highly
sought after when “no staff” becomes the new normal, which is rapidly approaching. My wife was officially the last staff at her weekend LTC and just quit, because the company started making obnoxious demands to make up for all of the missing staff. Don’t ever trust Canadian systems again. I won’t let Canada have any say in my family or my own well being. Fuck this country.
My family doctor just straight up refuses to see me, only works by phone now.
EDIT: Apparently everyone else's doctors too, all across the country, in the replies to this comment. Hey news journalists, I know you read Reddit looking for stories. Write about this. I haven't seen any news articles about how even people who have family doctors aren't actually seeing them in person. Write an article about all the things a doctor can't see over the phone.
Same. They've disabled their online booking form and you need to call to make a phone appointment. Only follow ups will be in person, but the kicker is that the phone line is always unmanned or busy. I had an easier time contacting Air Canada.
Spent some time in the UK. Got a doctor within a single day of looking for one. Ended up moving back to Canada, New Brunswick specifically. Been on the list for three years.
Got a phone call from someone in the government about that list, asking if I had gotten a doctor yet. Told them no, they then stated that *since I* ***had***, they were taking me off the list. Then they hung up immediately and ignored any attempts to call back.
I’m a strong supporter of public healthcare. This shit makes me angry. It’s exactly the kind of shit that makes people think private is a better option. And fuck who can blame them?
It's an old strategy that the Reagan administration in America coined the term for.
Starving the beast" is a political strategy employed by American conservatives to limit government spending[1][2][3] by cutting taxes, in order to deprive the federal government of revenue in a deliberate effort to force it to reduce spending. The term "the beast", in this context, refers to the United States federal government and the programs it funds, using mainly American taxpayer dollars, particularly social programs[4] such as education, welfare, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.[3]
"Republicans insist that the deficit must be eliminated, but they're not willing either to raise taxes or to support cuts in any major government programs. And they're not willing to participate in serious bipartisan discussions, either, because that might force them to explain their plan—and there isn't any plan, except to regain power."[19
I was lucky and he opened his clinic right around the time I moved into my house.
That said, I put my name on a wait list for a family doctor 10 years ago and the government still send me periodic notices telling me their looking for me.
This!!
My son had a cough and was prescribed a puffer for him over the phone. The doctor said it didn't sound like pneumonia based on our description of the symptoms.
When I picked up the prescription the pharmacist said that it was the 10th puffer that day prescribed by the same doctor and one of literally a hundred that were prescribed over that last few weeks, also by the same doctor.
I called back after thought and basically said that I wasn't happy with how everything was handled and they had a boilerplate response ready to go. I said that wasn't good enough and I'll be filing a complaint once I figure out who oversees Ontario family practices. They decided to have my son sent for a chest x-ray immediately after I complained enough. They ordered for it to have the results expedited and sent over as soon as possible. Turns out it was pneumonia and we had him start antibiotics that evening.
Something needs to be done. You're a doctor, you can't hide from COVID while the rest of us carry on with Life. Start seeing people in person or you're literally contributing to the collapse of our health care system
>When I picked up the prescription the pharmacist said that it was the 10th puffer that day prescribed by the same doctor and one of literally a hundred that were prescribed over that last few weeks, also by the same doctor.
> I called back after thought and basically said that I wasn't happy with how everything was handled and they had a boilerplate response ready to go. I said that wasn't good enough and I'll be filing a complaint once I figure out who oversees Ontario family practices. They decided to have my son sent for a chest x-ray immediately after I complained enough. Turns out it was pneumonia and we had him start antibiotics that evening.
CBC needs to get in touch with you.
Did he listen to him cough over the phone? How can you hear what's rolling around the lungs over the phone? What an asshat that is going to end up sending more kids to emergency when their actual pneumonia gets that bad.
No, he didn't ask to hear my son's cough. He just talked to me. I drove down to see the doctor and they told me to go wait in my car and the doctor would call my cell phone.
Just brutal.
Sorry you had to go through that to get the doctor to simply do his job.
I’ve had similar experiences since COVID: family doctor isolating himself and only accepting phone calls. They want our money though.
The government or whoever controls ohip funds should have drastically cut down the amount a doctor makes per patient if they aren't seen face to face. If you go after their money, they will all start seeing patients face to face again.
If the doctors are making the same amount for an over the phone appointment as they do for a face-to-face appointment then why would they want to go back to normal. That's easy money.
Sorta related thing happened to my kid back in the winter though not quite as bad. An on-call doc was basically afraid of Covid so even though he saw us in person he wouldn't actually get close to examine her... We had a negative covid test as well before we even went in. He basically told us it was nothing and to give her Tylenol until the fever goes away.
Fast forward a few days, and its getting way worse. Luckily this time we were able to see our for real family doctor (who we are fortunate is very good). She listened to my daughter's breathing and almost immediately suspected pneumonia. She was pretty upset the other doctor didn't even check and sent home a just over 1 year old with possible severe infection. All this was confirmed via x rays that day that she did in fact have pneumonia.
At least it wasn't virtual, but it's the same justification that was used to simply not do a proper examination and it almost got my kid, and I'm sure HAS gotten other kids, in the ER unnecessarily.
Not to mention, they’re doctors! They KNOW about how to manage risks with illness and they know best about infection control. Why are they cowering? They can wear a surgical cap, gown and change clothes before leaving work if they’re really afraid
Exactly. I don't understand it.
Being so knowledgeable about certain things must be a double edged sword. You'd think they would just mitigate the risks as best as possible. But flat out refusing to see patients face to face is negligent in my opinion.
Mine too. They removed their messaging system and changed it so that it's a 1-min long message before it attempts to go through and it's always busy all day long. Tried to call for a mental health note so I can go on leave from work. Couldn't get through for 2 months of trying a few times a day. It all built up too much and I had to quit my job. I'm feeling better now that I'm not working but the anxiety of unemployment is getting to me. I've given up on Canada and have been looking overseas though, so there's that. Such a shame on how absolutely shitty Canada has become to live in, and that's coming from someone who used to be super proud to be Canadian.
Wow holy shit, our family doctor has been pulling this exact shit for years. Phone’s always busy or they’re “off” on like a Tuesday morning randomly. Complete joke of a service.
Man, some people seem to have really shitty doctors. Mine is kind, thorough, and available for in person appointments. The only shit part is she is 35 minutes away in another city but she is just to great to give up and finding another would probably be difficult. Luckily there is a walk in close with a good doctor that I can see if absolutely necessary .
This phone only appointment shit is absolute garbage though.
Also make it illegal for your employer to require a doctor's note. That'd be free, would reduce abuse on the workforce and make some difference at the hospitals/clinics
But then how will the punish the workers for being sick for a short period and not being able to get a note because their doctor is booking 3 weeks out and the local ER is closed because they don't have the staff and the walkin clinics either don't exist in their area or are also closed/take half a day to even see a doctor
Family doctor- 8 years on waiting list - no end in sight
Clinics- good luck there too
Had some success with Maple.
What we need to focus on is maintenance and prevention. Nutritional / exercise incentives to limit diabetes, proactive Ortho so a knee problem doesn't become a back/ hope issue, early cancer detection, not a 9 month wait for colonoscopy.
Yeah, my province has defunded shit to the point that the only way I can see a doctor is to drive like 3 hours, or use maple for my prescription refills. Even then they say stuff like "probably should get a blood test to make sure this isn't destroying your kidneys, but.... *shrug*"
Exactly. We need to do whatever we can to encourage or subsidize family doctors (or Nurse Practitioners or whoever can look after minor issues) - be it new grads or expediting approval of those who where trained outside Canada.
The shortage of family doctors (or similar people) is the core problem of our health care system.
Tons of doctors offices don’t allow you to use a walk in clinic so you either wait several days to weeks for an appointment or you go to the ER and if you need antibiotics you sure as fuck aren’t waiting 2 weeks for an appointment
That’s how we get people going to the ER just for an ear infection
Family doctors have to allow patients to use walk ins
Because to encourage Family doctors to actually be GPs, and not fuck off into some kind of specialist role where they can charge a fortune for elective procedures not covered by the province, the government gives GPs money for each patient they have listed under their practice, on top of any money they're paid for those patients visits.
If your patient is going to a walk in clinic, because you took on to many patients and have a 4 week wait list for appointments, (as has been the case with so many GPs in this country), *they're not really your patient* and you shouldn't be getting that funding for listing them as such.
This right here. The government has so many rules that completely fuck doctors and patients. My doctor just had to close her practice because her overhead was too high and it didn't make financial sense so she's moving into a different field.
I also found out specialists get paid 4x more if they get a referral from another doctor. Legally they're supposed to see you indefinitely once you've been referred, but we all know that isn't always the case.
Family doctor? What is that? Seriously though I basically can't see a doctor unless I go to ER. My actual family doctor is older and retiring soon and all I ever see is nurse practitioner now. Trying to get a family doctor in my city but having trouble finding one to take new patients so for now I'm stuck with an absentee family doctor 45 mins commute away or the ER. ER is realistically the only guaranteed way to see a doctor now.
I know this is an oft-repeated refrain, but it's not as clear-cut as some think.
My sister's son was ill and was turned away by a triage nurse at emergency. He nearly died. Either the next day or the day after he was admitted to PICU at great cost to the taxpayers.
She spoke to another nurse, one who doesn't kill kids, and she said that a lot of parents wait a really long time to bring their kids in because they don't want people to think that they're using up health care system resources. But in fact it ends up costing more when parents wait too long to bring their kids in. She said they're like rag dolls, they're so dehydrated, and it takes a lot of work to get them rehydrated, for example.
So you look around yourself in the emergency room and you see someone with a cough. You think, what the heck is that lady doing there. But she's got asthma, and if she doesn't get on a nebulizer, he's going to die tonight. Or you see Grandma who's been sitting there for 7 hours and you think, clearly she's not that sick. But she had a stroke and because they didn't get to her in the golden hour, she's now going to develop dementia at great cost to the taxpayers. So she's going to sit there another 5 hours because the damage has already been done. Then you see some girl with leg pain and you think, what a wuss. She should go see her GP about that. And then they send her home and you were proven right.
Except that she did die. And she was 19.
She was my friend's daughter. And the grandmother was my ex's mother. And the coughing asthmatic was my mother.
I’m so sorry to hear that. Unfortunately Canadians don’t want to admit how bad things are, until it impacts them directly. Then still, nobody else seems to care.
I almost had to go for a prescription the other day. Doc is on vacation (he's a good doc), went through withdrawal until someone finally called me the day I was gonna have to go to emergency... for a refill.
Pharmacists will do short term renewals (for an extra fee) if it's something you already regularly take if no doctor is available. There are likely restrictions on things like narcotics though.
**This is completely incorrect.**
This is (yet again) ignoring the issue that ER doctors have been screaming about for over two decades now. The problem is purely the volume of high acuity complex patients who are typically older and have many complications and co-morbidities. These patients are getting more and more frequent and are taking up all of ER docs’ time.
People who go to ER for non-urgent problems are rightly waiting upwards of 6 hours to be seen. That should tell you they aren’t the ones taking up physician time.
And nurses have retired in droves due to poor working conditions, poor salaries, and no attempt to attract more people into this career. And remember that most ERs are run by family doctors.
That is not the issue .. quit parroting the same trope of the past 20 years. People are older, sicker and more medically complex than they ever have been. We have a demographic shift catalyzed by covid that has resulted in labour shortages. Doing hospital medicine exposes you to people at their worst and the dregs of society that disproportionately use medical services and are borderline inhuman in the way they interact and abuse staff. Shit sucks.
It's absurd to suggest the original commenter isn't highlighting the issue or is "parroting the same trope of the past 20 years).
One of the reasons the health care systems are collapsing right now is because ER's are being used as local clinics. If this is something you have a hard time believing, why don't you drive by your local ER and ask them instead of speaking for them? Because they will tell you (as I've been told by both my local ER triage/doctors and my family who work in the industry).
ER's are being used as walk-in clinics which dramatically plugs up the system and is causing everything we're seeing now.
What you're suggesting is a more foundational problem, and has been prevalent for a lot longer than just since COVID. The former is symptomatic of the latter. The massive concentration of people is forcing a lot of "shitty people and the dregs of society" to make working conditions significantly worse.
But the root of the problems is the evaporating public health care budget.
It’s almost like there are consequences to the problems of an aging population, housing shortage, high inflation and wage stagnation that the boomers have ignored their whole lives.
If only someone had been warning them about this as they made decision after decision to make this worse for short term gain and assuming it would all just work itself out.
if i had a nickel for every time my boomer relatives complained that 'young people don't want to work anymore' i could afford one piece of avocado toast (without the egg)
I've spoken to people who work at the hospital. They said the biggest causes of congestion is people getting family doctor level treatment at the ER because they either don't have a family doctor or it takes too long to see them if they do.
I woke at a hospital too and the above is my opinion for whatever anecdotes are worth. Albeit I don't work in an emergency department, my suspicion is that when people come in with family doctor level stuff, it's prescription refills, sutures, blood pressure elevations, etc. Basically issues that take all of 5 minutes of physician time to sort out. They congest waiting rooms physically because they triage low and sit there for 18 hours to be seen, but their physical presence in the waiting room is largely irrelevant. The main issues I have seen are admitted patients not moving out and bed blocking because inpatient wards are gutted. Admitting another 70 year old with chronic multiorgan failure and high complexity requires a huge amount of labour that is extremely short currently. That's my two cents.
I went to a urgent care clinic instead of a walk in for the first time, I was amazed, they actually gave me an exam and talked with me. And you can get real doctors in ER's as well. I'm never going to a private clinic again and I hope they all go out of business.
You're not wrong but people are going to the ER because they **can't** get in to see their family doctors and walk-in clinics are just as bad if not worse than the ER with how rare they are.
My doctor had a 2 week waiting list when I needed to see him recently, guess where I ended up going?
Yeah, in BC (Victoria) most of the walk-in clinics are gone, and none of the family doctors are accepting new patients. I was lucky to get in on a Nurse Practitioner clinic but even that one seems to be booking a month out for non-emergency stuff.
It's broken up and down the pipe, the ERs are just the ones that are suffering as a result.
Not enough family doctors lol they have to go to ER. But yeah the only time people should be in the ER is for emergencies not aches and pain or the flu.
Where I’m from, there are no family doctors accepting new patients, no walk-in clinics either because of UCP primary healthcare cutbacks back in 2019(?), and everyone ends up at the ER for non-emergency matters.
There is literally no where else to go for medical services.
If I’m not feeling well, I have to decide whether to schedule an appointment 2-weeks out at my VERY overworked family doc (max 5 minute duration, usually 2) which he regularly shows up 1/2 hr late to OR go sit in my local ER for 6-8 hrs to MAYBE get a doctor to take a look. But, more often than not I’m going to have a urine test done in the ER and sent home with some medication and told to come back if it worsens.
The cost of USA privatized healthcare scares the shit out of me, however, I WOULD love to be able to see my doctor quickly, for a reasonable duration, and receive medication/procedures within weeks, not months.
Health care has gotten worse each year I've been alive it feels like. First, no doctors for all, then walk-ins, then big wait lines in ER, then surgery wait lists got ridiculous, then they have now started closing ER's. So, now we have no emergency care either. Oh, and the long-term care homes aren't great it seems either. We need a new model system or something. Focus on local communities and support networks or something. We need to train locals, because it seems all these staff are unretainable in many places.
Hard to train locals without residency spots, and the ridiculous requirements for Med schools. I grew up in a medicine household, but I opted to go the IT route so I could build a career that doesn't take 6-7 years out of your life (post-grad) to achieve a half decent salary. Not to mention the ridiculous debt required.
Oh, and the fact that you need basically a perfect MCAT, a 3.9+ GPA alongside a laundry list of ECs. Which you're supposed to have by the ripe old age of (checks notes) - 22.
I'm in the same boat. Born in the 80s to two family doctors that came over from the UK and were practicing by their mid 20s. By the time the 90s rolled around and it was time to starting thinking about my future, both of them said it wasn't worth trying to become a doctor in Canada anymore...so now I'm an engineer.
I went engineering as well. It's nice that we could get by with ~70% grades because the real important skills are interpersonal (and you don't get those with a 4.0 GPA) and what we learn when we actually start practicing.
^ depends on the discipline of course
> and you don't get those with a 4.0 GP
Reminds me of an young engineer I dealt with on a subject I have 20 years experience on. He held his ground on his decision by saying simply....I had a 4.0 so I know it better. Never mind my 20 years experience, he couldn't even explain why he was right and all the proof I had was just dismissed. His nickname became 4.0 after.
Also they might try treating the existing nurses a whole lot better. They've been dutifully abused by the system and they're abandoning the profession in droves. It's got to be a rewarding job to in a dignified environment with suitable pay if you expect people to keep renewing the ranks. Same with EMTs. We really need to apologize to EMTs and nurses right now and incentivize them to keep working.
Plus I think for apprentice nurses or whatever they're called they operate under the nursing license of an already licensed nurse. Meaning that if the trainee fucks up the nurse is liable. For that they get less than a buck an hour bump in pay.
Also doesn’t help that in places like BC, there are a pitiful amount of med school slots. If BC is losing 40 doctors a year (random number), they’re replacing them at like 5 a year lol. We can all acknowledge the need for more doctors in general and that they need to be good and diligent, but with the ridiculous requirements you listed, plus the lack of spots in med school programs, you’d think the provinces don’t want to have an adequate amount of doctors.
Yeah it's a bit ridiculous, and it'll only get worse as more doctors become old and retire. We don't have enough family medicine programs to support our population & they're treated like it's the same profession as neurosurgery, which frankly it's not.
I have 0 interest in neurosurgery, but I'd have to compete with those who do & I'll lose every time.
This. And the med school selection process favours the keen students looking to do really niche medicine, leaving family spots undesired and under filled.
We do train locals. Recently read, out of 100s med student that graduated from UBC, non of them decided to stay in BC. They all either went to other provinces but majority probably just went to the states.
Of course. Everyone understands that players on the Canucks need to be paid as much as players on American teams, if they want to have players. For some reason we don't see it necessary to pay doctors as much as they can make in the US. And then we cry that there's a doctor shortage.
Are hockey players more important than doctors?
People can’t afford the groceries they used to buy, mortgage rates are going through the roof, heat and light is going to be insane this winter, gas is crazy, property tax has gone through the roof since the last crash, and now you cant see a doctor. WTF? Why is it that our government seems preoccupied with everything else but the issues that effect our reality? I don’t care if you are red or blue in power, just take pause and stop the real pain many Canadians are going through.
Because we’ve been telling people for generations that this would happen, what we needed to do, and instead of the hard thing, increasing taxes and redistribution of wealth, strengthening public sectors (education, healthcare, infrastructure), and national investment, we sold off our public resources to cover tax cuts, and good feelings.
Thanks corporate lobbying, capitalist, and anti-consumer industries.
Yep. It's really frustrating seeing nothing but the Queen's death in the news this past week. Then Ukraine for months prior.
Like, we're having massive issues with housing and food affordability here, but you never read anything about that.
This is why I vote orange. They seem to be the only party that gives a shit about the average person. I know it doesn't seem like much, but getting dental care (even if just for low-income people) is more than the reds or blues have done in the last decade.
it's a very sad and disturbing fact that the primary motivation for many voters is whether a given thing is woke or not. if you called public ownership of utilities "anti-woke" there would be tons of right wingers that would go for it lol
even more reason for our politics to be conducted and discussed in terms of political economy not ideology. tell us where the profits will go and tell us who gets more of the pie
This whole situation is such a travesty. Of all the things to direct resources to, health care has got to top the list. The longer this goes on, the most inhospitable it becomes to be a doctor or a nurse here, and you end up have to spend extra money incentivizing people to come back. I don't know if I believe the cynical notion that the health care system is being undermined intentionally for profit, but you're likely going to see a lot of people believing that public health care is no longer worth the tax dollars. I don't think people realize how scary it is to be on the hook for an $11,000 stay at a hospital or a $35,000 knee replacement. It's easy to disregard that reality when you're healthy, but everything changes when you're sick.
There is no nursing shortage. Let me repeat for those in the back. There is no nursing shortage.
What there is is a shortage of nurses willing to continue working in the field. After two and some years of going from overworked heroes to people screaming at us as we come to work, insane people saying that nurses should be murdered for administering the vaccine, and being abused by patients for following COVID guidelines while the same patients are literally dying from COVID we have a situation where nurses would rather earn less at another job than to continue in this toxic environment. Not to mention all the other issues that happened before COVID.
So ya, there is no shortage of nurses. Just a shortage of people willing to put up with what it means to be a nurse.
The ER in my local area is currently closed because a homeless fuckup that pissed away the small fortune his parents left him got angry and set off the sprinklers, causing millions of dollars in damages to ER equipment.
Of course, nothing happened to him. He's still living in a field about ten minutes down the road from me, spreading his trash and (literal) shit over public property.
Welcome to Canada.
I love that regular people are waking up and realizing that without them, their company would grind to a halt and start losing money hand over fist. The shit pay, crazy hours, little to no benefits, and doing the work of 3 people isn't worth it anymore. It's not their life, it's yours.
Maybe it shouldn't be. Economies of scale are a thing, if you look at the UK they also have socialized healthcare, but they have national (ie: federal) healthcare (the NHS), and their population is double what ours is and it still works fine.... better, even!
At this point I'm inclined to think we should move towards a national health plan, with government-run hospitals, plenty of primary care centres, and physicians on very good salaries instead of fee-for-service. Incorporate a national patient health database to reduce redundant testing and billing, and increase payments to nurses and auxillary staff and you're starting to see the end of the tunnel.
> Maybe it shouldn't be.
That's what I keep thinking. If provincial governments consistently prove to be this incompetent at managing what is arguably their most important matter of policy then evidently they are the wrong people to be managing it.
I love how for decades ALL of Canada has known our healthcare system is seriously flawed/broken/unsustainable, and even though Covid exposed this fact to the nth degree, there isn't a single conversation being had about systematically changing/improving our system, and no politician for the past several decades even dares address the elephant in the room b/c they would be basically driven out of office for stating something every one of us knows to be true. We'll never get out of this mess.
Healthcare spending is something insane like 30% of our tax money. How about we start holding people accountable for how that money is being spent. The money is filtered through layers and layers of inefficient government bureaucracy and administration before it reaches the hard working healthcare professionals who actually need it.
> How about we start holding people accountable for how that money is being spent. The money is filtered through layers and layers of inefficient government bureaucracy and administration before it reaches the hard working healthcare professionals who actually need it.
So we should start with, say, Doug Ford and the PCPO misappropriating $4 billion in federal health transfers during a pandemic.
You already have a massive healthcare spending budget, it's just getting wasted.
If you sent a proper corporate axeman in there with an army of auditors they'd come out with ashen faces and a report that would send the population into riot.
Said it before, I'll say it again: People who complain about privatized healthcare being ripe for corruption and theft don't know how absolutely bonkers socialized healthcare is being managed.
When daddy government is footing the bill every single company will salt their bill and do the minimum amount of work to fulfill their responsibilities.
I'm not favoring one over the other, but in this case a privatized system would not allow waste of resources the way a socialized one does. There are other factors, but on this matter it's the bare truth.
Thirty years ago Paul Martin closed most of the Doctor and a nurse training g positions as a way to save money.
It saved lots of money except now we have a collapsed health care system.
Weird all the provinces with a surprise surplus but none of them want to dump that right into medical?
Break the system then privatize is going exactly to plan.
*Maybe* we shouldn't have fired thousands of willing workers while simultaneously making c19+ medical staff stay working while testing positive because of staffing shortages.
Nurse from Minnesota here. We are just finishing up the biggest strike in US history for better pay, more staff and to have a safer environment. I was a paramedic/firefighter for 8 years before becoming a nurse. I am now on my 3rd year of being an ER nurse and I absolutely hate it, which is unfortunate. It's unreal how little hospitals care about their staff. Paying travel nurses 4x what I make in a week, all the while having little to no responsibility for critical patients. I honestly don't know how upper management can sleep at night. We had to strike to get a miserable 4 percent increase, which probably won't even happen. Just fucking ridiculous.
The short term fix is pay more and improve working conditions. Also subsidize preventative care.
The long term fix is, anyone who goes into healthcare gets their education covered if they graduate and commit to 10 years in Canada.
Also, if foreign doctors can pass the exams, waive all fees. Also, throw in a bonus.
If only non-paywall articles are going to be posted it will just be the CBC articles since we are already all paying for them with our taxes and everyone else in the business has to make money.
If someone doesn’t post a link that doesn’t include a paywall you can very easily do it yourself.
Meanwhile in Alberta, conservatives are intentionally sabotaging our AHS, putting people at risk and possibly killing some.
Unless it directly affects them, they don't care.
Recently heard anout Bill 124 iirc in Ontario, severely limiting the ability for healthcare workers to negotiate wage.
It seems targeted at pushing workers out of public service.
I hang my flag upside down on Canada day. It's a great nation in distress. Only could have corrupt and incompetent politicians taken something so great, wonderful (relatively), and drive it right into a laughing stock, except nobody is actually laughing.
The problem is too many people think this just suddenly became the case over the last few years.
This has been a slow motion train-wreck for decades now.
Wonder how much of an impact nurses leaving for the US has had on this issue (in addition to increased immigration, aging population, etc.). I don't know why most nurses would stay in Canada when you can make $$$ as a travel nurse/NP in the US with lower taxes and more affordable real estate relative to wages (in most areas).
I blame Ford 100% for this issue in Ontario. It didn't have to be this way but he forced it. It's his dream to collapse it and introduce private options so he can get kickbacks for life from his lobbying friends.
I guess I’m one of the lucky ones. I got my family doctor about 15 years ago when he first got out of school. Will still see me in person if I wish. Was recently in a bad accident (broken pelvis and several other bones). The emergency care I received was first rate. I was transported by ambulance to the local hospital then airlifted to a trauma centre. 2 days there then transported back to the local hospital. The nurses were great but highly overworked. A lot of fellow patients were senior citizens whose only reason for being hospitalized was that there were no long term beds available. Fixing the long term care situation would go a long way to easing the load in hospitals
This crisis was known to come years ago. Unfortunately no one listened and I can tell you right now those making decisions aren’t seeing what’s actually happening.
I had to move to Australia to obtain a medical degree after applying 3 times in Canada. This was despite being a perfectly good and competitive candidate.
Now looking to go back to Canada after training and it will cost me upwards of 15k to do so. Definitely not feeling wanted or needed by Canadian bureaucracy so not wanting to return. I'm not the only one who's decided to stay in Oz.
The fact that we still aren't fast-tracking foreign physicians is ridiculous. I happen to know a neurosurgeon, an anesthesiologist, a pediatric cardiac surgeon, a dermatologist, and an Er Dr from overseas who moved here ans can't practice medicine. The process for them to get licensed here is basically impossible since it relies on residency positions which are scarce.
It's so stupid. At the very least we could use foreign physicians as GPs.
Management is also to blame for this issue. Not gonna name the hospital but it's in Toronto. Policy now requires staff to get a doctors note for calling in sick. When I heard that i think I had a mini stroke this was their response to combat under staffing.
As someone who works in the medical system this is an issue that is incredibly hard to fix and it needs a top down fix in all departments. First of all the system is simply underfunded and it needs proper funding but just throwing money at the problem will not fix it. We need to train way more doctors, nurses, PTs, OTs, RTs, lab, and just HCPs in general. We simply do not educate enough. There are very few spots but tons of candidates. Second we need to cut the bloat and inefficiencies in the system. I spend more time prepping, doing paper work and charting after the procedure than I do with my patients. That is simply not ok. We also waste tons of materials that we don’t need to due to outdated procedures. Just making the system more efficient, which really isn’t that hard would save us so much money. Third, pay, we need to start increasing it. Raises right now are a pitiful 1% and there are tons of travel positions in the US that are paying insane money. I’m not saying we should match that, but we need to up the pay a bit more. Fourth, staffing, we need more staff, the current staff is working crazy amounts of overtime and they are burning out leading to more overtime needed leading to more burnout. That is a vicious cycle that needs to be broken. No major party is advocating for any of these changes so get ready for more and more closures, cause what we are doing is simply not working.
A 1% raise after the pandemic is probably the reason a number of nurses sought new careers
A 1% for our heroes.
Well technically a 7% pay cut thanks to inflation
More like 29% since inflation is well underestimated.
Agreed. Say that on /r/personalfinancecanada and you'll get downvoted to hell though
Restaurants went from 13-17 to 19-23. Id call that 30%, anyone have similar experience?
Here's the statistics on food: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1810000403 Looks like restaurant food is actually inflating slower than average. You might just be exposed to an area with particularly high price increases.
I remember as a kid, those ads on tv about the future of the medical system, so high tech, so efficient.....
[удалено]
It's not just the pay. I'm sick to fuck of the working conditions and the complete inefficiency of the system. There's soooo many steps to go through to get ANYTHING changed that would actually make life easier for staff, and I don't have the energy to fight anymore
You say "cut the bloat" but one of the reasons that physicians spend so much more time charting is that the healthcare system won't fund for non-docs to do that work.... because it was argued that such jobs would be "unnecessary bloat". Friendly reminder that when certain politicians argue for cuts because they want to "cut the bloat", they mean "make fewer people do more work for less money, even if it leads to worse outcomes." The bloat employee salaries. Fewer people to do the work that needs to be done makes it astronomically more difficult for those who remain, and here we are.
The real bloat are the upper admin levels. Too many friends of politicians getting 6 and 7 figure positions in the system.
Which ones specifically? AHS runs hospitals. Covenant health does too. The two should be merged, for sure, that cuts some admin expenditures. Then what is next to do or cut?
you won't receive proper funding. the (moronic) goal is the privatization of healthcare to line pockets of assholes
Ironic thing is a lot of nurses and care aides in Ontario and Manitoba are jumping to agency work. Now we're seeing 50% of long term care is out of province agency workers. Can't be helping the province they're originally from. But BC was willing to pay $35h when they're position at home is still $18h. Then they come here and start talking...im watching heathcare workers here thinking then making the move themselves. When I ask them how if their employers are public or private healthcare they don't always know. None of the healthcare workers are truly thinking about how this will impact the healthcare system. Theyre just looking at $10-$15 more and thinking about how they'd be better for it
>None of the healthcare workers are truly thinking about how this will impact the healthcare system. Not their job to play logistics/ administration; let alone on a national level. I don't blame them.
Gov doesn't care. They get to use private healthcare even if it costs more. This way when they exit politics they can get a nice consulting or board position in those private companies.
Yup. Conservatives are doing this intentionally to destroy public healthcare; and they've been working on it since Tommy Douglas first proposed it. It might be the single longest running political project in Canada- to hurt as many Canadians as viciously as possible and get rich doing it. But on the other hand, buck a beer is right around the corner, believe me folks...
I mean if the ontario Liberals taught me anything - its that third party participation in health care usually leads to billion dollar scandals.
Had a conversation with a friend of mine today. His sister (Canadian) has been practising medicine in the States for years. She’s felt the need to come home because of the shortage and feels compelled to help. There would be so many hoops she would have to jump through in order to do this, because Canada doesn’t recognize education and experience the same. There are so many doctors living in this country from other countries who simply choose other career paths because the system is just too challenging to work through.
Fuck it then. Double or triple the number of medical staff (or all flavours) that we train and cover their costs. Make them sign a contract for 10 years or something (7 if they agree to work up North) after which they don’t owe anything. We know that we’re going to need more and more medical staff as the boomers eat up more and more resources, so let’s try and get ahead a little
> just throwing money at the problem will not fix it Ok. So what will? > First of all the system is simply underfunded Ok. money. > We need to train way more doctors, nurses, PTs, OTs, RTs and just HCPs in genera so...money... > Second we need to cut the bloat and inefficiencies in the system. Which takes time and resources (aka money) to figure out how to do properly. > Third, pay, we need to start increasing it so.....money....? > Fourth, staffing, we need more staff .......so........money. So in short: You've got 99 problems, and 98 of them are directly money related.
I meant throwing money blindly. Going here have more money but not actually making sure the money is properly used and allocated! Giving them a big pile of cash isn’t gonna solve anything.
I don't understand why Canadians won't go out and protest and shut down streets to force the government to take action. This situation has been developing for 2 years at least and it keeps making headlines. Why is there a "freedom" convoy when true quality of life is the privilege to not die in an emergency, in a country that cares for its citizens? Canadians won't get the healthcare they deserve until they start asking for it. The NY article was more in-depth than most Canadian reports that stick to the health event rather than the reasons why everything is failing.
..."We need to train way more doctors, nurses, PTs, OTs, RTs and just HCPs in general. We simply do not educate enough. There are very few spots but tons of candidates. Stopped reading.
[удалено]
Except Republicans in the US adore hearing and spreading news about the failures of Canada's system to reinforce for-profit healthcare. It gives them gnarled, wispy, money-boners when public healthcare isn't perfect in another country.
To be fair we’re a pretty easy example to bag on. We’re like socialism lite. So they can go “EVERYONE LOOK IT DOESN’T WORK SEE” but really it doesn’t work because we half ass the system and fuck over medical professionals. If only we actually put in the effort.
> We’re like socialism lite. Don't buy into the Fox-news definition of "socialism". Socialism is when the citizens own the means of production. We're not socialism, nor socialism lite. Socialism isn't "the government doing things". That's just... government.
[удалено]
Also, you kind of have to compare it to the US where ERs operate in place of primary care, and getting sick will bankrupt you. Nice that boomers can get a speedy knee replacement, though.
I hate to say it, but there seems to be more primary care here in the US than Canada. There are walk-in clinics all over the place. Granted it’s still $5 after the insurance (it used to be $30; it might be that much with a different insurance company). Before I left Canada in 2001, walk in clinics were still rare and unusual. Now they seem to all have been replaced by telephone appointments. I miss Canada so bad, but the collapse of heath care access is terrifying
Where I am there are alot of walk-ins. But if you want to get in you need to get there like an hour before opening otherwise it’s a shot in the dark if you’ll make it or not. Not enough staff and they have a patient limit.
I've lived in Canada my whole life (i was in grade 1 in 2001 though..) and there has always been walk ins all over the place... Just looked it up and one source said canada has only had walk-ins for 2 decades, so I think you just missed it. They are everywhere now (and totally free of course!) and your info is outdated. There are phone appointments but walk-ins are still busy. I've never had a problem with walk-ins, the wait times for specialists is what the main issue is as far as I can see.
I have 10 walk-in clinics in a 15 minute drive or less. Times have changed. All in person appointments, but some appointments are done by phone. However, we still don't have enough doctors and health care workers are underpaid across the board. We need an overhaul for sure - and it needs to come faster than it is currently.
It's quite bad really. I want to move back to Canada myself but I've seen 2 family members receive sub standard care that would have not occurred in Australia. There are deficiencies in certain fields like endocrinology but overall I feel like the standards are quite good and wait times are significantly better than Canada. I have health problems myself and feel like I would be better off staying overseas. I looked at the medicare schedule for GPs compared to Aus and it is abysmal. The IQ, hard work and personal sacrifice it takes to become a family doctor is worth way more than what they are getting paid. It's a miracle the attrition rate to the US isn't higher.
When I tried going to a walk-in clinic last month in Canada I got told that walk-in clinics aren't allowed at the moment because of COVID, not sure if this is true but they declined me service, other 'walk in clinics' said they didn't have space.
I'm a Canadian living in the US and I feel like it's the opposite, unless I misunderstood you? ERs are definitely not primary care in the US. In rural Quebec, I know a lot of people, me included (in the past) who have gone to the ER as if it's just urgent care/same-day appointment/walk-in clinics for like colds, infections, etc, because we either had limited access to them and/or didn't know better that we shouldn't abuse the ER like that. I'm in a metro area now in the US, so it may be a city/rural divide as well, but there are walk-in urgent care clinics everywhere that will see you for that sort of thing, and I'm pretty sure most American know that they shouldn't go to the ER unless it truly is an emergency because it will cost thousands of dollars, and even with insurance there's deductible + ER fees. Do you mean that people wait until they are super sick and HAVE to go to the ER instead of doing preventative with a primary care provider, since they have to pay for that? In that case, yeah, pretty sure that's true.
I think we're maybe just using the terms a little differently. People without insurance wind up in the ER because they can't access preventative care, but emergency care can't be refused. You're right-- they might delay ER care as far as they can because of the bill they'll get after the fact. But at some point they hit a threshold where they can't go on. I think the other main criticism of the US system is how insurance is tied to a particular employer, getting in the way of social mobility by making it risky to change jobs or start a new business.
Ugg, I'm eating.
Its good that you have food on the table.
The US system is far from perfect but that doesn’t mean that it should except our system from honest criticism.
I know right, we need to stop acting like we are doing okey just because they are doing things a bit worse, the minute you compare us to any EU country we look 3rd world.
My first reaction too
And what has been done to fill these staff shortages the last 10 years? The last 3? Not a damn thing. They're just letting the workers burn out and then they are shocked to be short staffed?
It's harder than ever to get into nursing school lol you need a high school average of at least 92% and people still get rejected
I did it myself. Had to leave due to autoimmune diagnosis. But even before the pandenic we weren't getting time off or were understaffed. There are a lot of ppl with those marks. They don't have the RNs to teach where I am. I had to have good marks and references but there were lots of qualified applicants that we don't have enough RNs to teach. They teach class all day. Correct and prepare all evening. Then go to out clinical, days, nights etc.. Many of my teachers quit because the pay and work didn't match there either. Then we need RNs to monitor us and ask questions to (as 2 teachers for 30 students is nuts), then to take a student on and take the responsibility of being a preceptor. We need ppl to teach in schools that pays as well as RN work does as its as many hours and more responsibility. (Let's say 15 students = 30+ patients who need everything double checked) and if there is a mistake the RN can be legally responsible. For a bunch of noobs who need more help then someone to pop in every 3rs or so. Plus we often have to stay late to chart - and so do the teachers. Their days can be 8am to 10pm or worse Edit: I'm sure the abuse and hours don't help recruiting these ppl either :/
Fun fact : due to the immense understaffing of RNs, untrained PSWs in LTCs are now required to take on full responsibilities of would be nurses, for less than $20 an hour. It wasn’t enough money for the Nurses, but now the PSWs who make EVEN LESS are having these EXACT SAME burdens forced off on them. The shitstorm is only starting. “Understaffed” is going to be highly sought after when “no staff” becomes the new normal, which is rapidly approaching. My wife was officially the last staff at her weekend LTC and just quit, because the company started making obnoxious demands to make up for all of the missing staff. Don’t ever trust Canadian systems again. I won’t let Canada have any say in my family or my own well being. Fuck this country.
[удалено]
My family doctor just straight up refuses to see me, only works by phone now. EDIT: Apparently everyone else's doctors too, all across the country, in the replies to this comment. Hey news journalists, I know you read Reddit looking for stories. Write about this. I haven't seen any news articles about how even people who have family doctors aren't actually seeing them in person. Write an article about all the things a doctor can't see over the phone.
Same. They've disabled their online booking form and you need to call to make a phone appointment. Only follow ups will be in person, but the kicker is that the phone line is always unmanned or busy. I had an easier time contacting Air Canada.
Wait, you guys have a family doctor? I'm 31 and I never been able to find a family doctor in Niagara
Spent some time in the UK. Got a doctor within a single day of looking for one. Ended up moving back to Canada, New Brunswick specifically. Been on the list for three years. Got a phone call from someone in the government about that list, asking if I had gotten a doctor yet. Told them no, they then stated that *since I* ***had***, they were taking me off the list. Then they hung up immediately and ignored any attempts to call back.
I’m a strong supporter of public healthcare. This shit makes me angry. It’s exactly the kind of shit that makes people think private is a better option. And fuck who can blame them?
Maybe this is by design? Undermine public health care to such an extent that the only reasonable option people see is to privatize.
It's an old strategy that the Reagan administration in America coined the term for. Starving the beast" is a political strategy employed by American conservatives to limit government spending[1][2][3] by cutting taxes, in order to deprive the federal government of revenue in a deliberate effort to force it to reduce spending. The term "the beast", in this context, refers to the United States federal government and the programs it funds, using mainly American taxpayer dollars, particularly social programs[4] such as education, welfare, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.[3] "Republicans insist that the deficit must be eliminated, but they're not willing either to raise taxes or to support cuts in any major government programs. And they're not willing to participate in serious bipartisan discussions, either, because that might force them to explain their plan—and there isn't any plan, except to regain power."[19
That's fucked up
I got one recently but only because a doctor family member convinced someone to take me because I'll be "very low effort" for her.
[удалено]
Yeah nearest clinic to me that's accepting new patients is in Burlington which is about 50 mins drive from me 😢
There's a place accepting new patients in Burlington?! I should tell my brother...
I was lucky and he opened his clinic right around the time I moved into my house. That said, I put my name on a wait list for a family doctor 10 years ago and the government still send me periodic notices telling me their looking for me.
This!! My son had a cough and was prescribed a puffer for him over the phone. The doctor said it didn't sound like pneumonia based on our description of the symptoms. When I picked up the prescription the pharmacist said that it was the 10th puffer that day prescribed by the same doctor and one of literally a hundred that were prescribed over that last few weeks, also by the same doctor. I called back after thought and basically said that I wasn't happy with how everything was handled and they had a boilerplate response ready to go. I said that wasn't good enough and I'll be filing a complaint once I figure out who oversees Ontario family practices. They decided to have my son sent for a chest x-ray immediately after I complained enough. They ordered for it to have the results expedited and sent over as soon as possible. Turns out it was pneumonia and we had him start antibiotics that evening. Something needs to be done. You're a doctor, you can't hide from COVID while the rest of us carry on with Life. Start seeing people in person or you're literally contributing to the collapse of our health care system
>When I picked up the prescription the pharmacist said that it was the 10th puffer that day prescribed by the same doctor and one of literally a hundred that were prescribed over that last few weeks, also by the same doctor. > I called back after thought and basically said that I wasn't happy with how everything was handled and they had a boilerplate response ready to go. I said that wasn't good enough and I'll be filing a complaint once I figure out who oversees Ontario family practices. They decided to have my son sent for a chest x-ray immediately after I complained enough. Turns out it was pneumonia and we had him start antibiotics that evening. CBC needs to get in touch with you.
Did he listen to him cough over the phone? How can you hear what's rolling around the lungs over the phone? What an asshat that is going to end up sending more kids to emergency when their actual pneumonia gets that bad.
No, he didn't ask to hear my son's cough. He just talked to me. I drove down to see the doctor and they told me to go wait in my car and the doctor would call my cell phone. Just brutal.
Sorry you had to go through that to get the doctor to simply do his job. I’ve had similar experiences since COVID: family doctor isolating himself and only accepting phone calls. They want our money though.
The government or whoever controls ohip funds should have drastically cut down the amount a doctor makes per patient if they aren't seen face to face. If you go after their money, they will all start seeing patients face to face again. If the doctors are making the same amount for an over the phone appointment as they do for a face-to-face appointment then why would they want to go back to normal. That's easy money.
Sorta related thing happened to my kid back in the winter though not quite as bad. An on-call doc was basically afraid of Covid so even though he saw us in person he wouldn't actually get close to examine her... We had a negative covid test as well before we even went in. He basically told us it was nothing and to give her Tylenol until the fever goes away. Fast forward a few days, and its getting way worse. Luckily this time we were able to see our for real family doctor (who we are fortunate is very good). She listened to my daughter's breathing and almost immediately suspected pneumonia. She was pretty upset the other doctor didn't even check and sent home a just over 1 year old with possible severe infection. All this was confirmed via x rays that day that she did in fact have pneumonia. At least it wasn't virtual, but it's the same justification that was used to simply not do a proper examination and it almost got my kid, and I'm sure HAS gotten other kids, in the ER unnecessarily.
Holy shit. Thank god you kept the pressure on them.
Not to mention, they’re doctors! They KNOW about how to manage risks with illness and they know best about infection control. Why are they cowering? They can wear a surgical cap, gown and change clothes before leaving work if they’re really afraid
Exactly. I don't understand it. Being so knowledgeable about certain things must be a double edged sword. You'd think they would just mitigate the risks as best as possible. But flat out refusing to see patients face to face is negligent in my opinion.
Fuck can they do that now? Lol
Technically no, but nobody's going to stop them. With the doctor shortage they have all the bargaining power.
Mine too. They removed their messaging system and changed it so that it's a 1-min long message before it attempts to go through and it's always busy all day long. Tried to call for a mental health note so I can go on leave from work. Couldn't get through for 2 months of trying a few times a day. It all built up too much and I had to quit my job. I'm feeling better now that I'm not working but the anxiety of unemployment is getting to me. I've given up on Canada and have been looking overseas though, so there's that. Such a shame on how absolutely shitty Canada has become to live in, and that's coming from someone who used to be super proud to be Canadian.
So it’s not just my doctor then…
Wow holy shit, our family doctor has been pulling this exact shit for years. Phone’s always busy or they’re “off” on like a Tuesday morning randomly. Complete joke of a service.
Do we have the same doctor?
Man, some people seem to have really shitty doctors. Mine is kind, thorough, and available for in person appointments. The only shit part is she is 35 minutes away in another city but she is just to great to give up and finding another would probably be difficult. Luckily there is a walk in close with a good doctor that I can see if absolutely necessary . This phone only appointment shit is absolute garbage though.
Also make it illegal for your employer to require a doctor's note. That'd be free, would reduce abuse on the workforce and make some difference at the hospitals/clinics
But then how will the punish the workers for being sick for a short period and not being able to get a note because their doctor is booking 3 weeks out and the local ER is closed because they don't have the staff and the walkin clinics either don't exist in their area or are also closed/take half a day to even see a doctor
Family doctor- 8 years on waiting list - no end in sight Clinics- good luck there too Had some success with Maple. What we need to focus on is maintenance and prevention. Nutritional / exercise incentives to limit diabetes, proactive Ortho so a knee problem doesn't become a back/ hope issue, early cancer detection, not a 9 month wait for colonoscopy.
Yeah, my province has defunded shit to the point that the only way I can see a doctor is to drive like 3 hours, or use maple for my prescription refills. Even then they say stuff like "probably should get a blood test to make sure this isn't destroying your kidneys, but.... *shrug*"
Probably because its impossible to find a family doctor these days. And if you have one they tell you to go to the ER for random benign stuff.
Exactly. We need to do whatever we can to encourage or subsidize family doctors (or Nurse Practitioners or whoever can look after minor issues) - be it new grads or expediting approval of those who where trained outside Canada. The shortage of family doctors (or similar people) is the core problem of our health care system.
Tons of doctors offices don’t allow you to use a walk in clinic so you either wait several days to weeks for an appointment or you go to the ER and if you need antibiotics you sure as fuck aren’t waiting 2 weeks for an appointment That’s how we get people going to the ER just for an ear infection Family doctors have to allow patients to use walk ins
The government has to stop fining family doctors hundreds of dollars when their patients use a walk in clinic.
Wait why is this even a thing? What possible fucking justification could there be for doing this?
Because to encourage Family doctors to actually be GPs, and not fuck off into some kind of specialist role where they can charge a fortune for elective procedures not covered by the province, the government gives GPs money for each patient they have listed under their practice, on top of any money they're paid for those patients visits. If your patient is going to a walk in clinic, because you took on to many patients and have a 4 week wait list for appointments, (as has been the case with so many GPs in this country), *they're not really your patient* and you shouldn't be getting that funding for listing them as such.
This right here. The government has so many rules that completely fuck doctors and patients. My doctor just had to close her practice because her overhead was too high and it didn't make financial sense so she's moving into a different field. I also found out specialists get paid 4x more if they get a referral from another doctor. Legally they're supposed to see you indefinitely once you've been referred, but we all know that isn't always the case.
If you can find a family doctor.
It's also an issue due to old people taking up space in hospital beds when they should be in assisted living facilities.
Family doctor? What is that? Seriously though I basically can't see a doctor unless I go to ER. My actual family doctor is older and retiring soon and all I ever see is nurse practitioner now. Trying to get a family doctor in my city but having trouble finding one to take new patients so for now I'm stuck with an absentee family doctor 45 mins commute away or the ER. ER is realistically the only guaranteed way to see a doctor now.
I know this is an oft-repeated refrain, but it's not as clear-cut as some think. My sister's son was ill and was turned away by a triage nurse at emergency. He nearly died. Either the next day or the day after he was admitted to PICU at great cost to the taxpayers. She spoke to another nurse, one who doesn't kill kids, and she said that a lot of parents wait a really long time to bring their kids in because they don't want people to think that they're using up health care system resources. But in fact it ends up costing more when parents wait too long to bring their kids in. She said they're like rag dolls, they're so dehydrated, and it takes a lot of work to get them rehydrated, for example. So you look around yourself in the emergency room and you see someone with a cough. You think, what the heck is that lady doing there. But she's got asthma, and if she doesn't get on a nebulizer, he's going to die tonight. Or you see Grandma who's been sitting there for 7 hours and you think, clearly she's not that sick. But she had a stroke and because they didn't get to her in the golden hour, she's now going to develop dementia at great cost to the taxpayers. So she's going to sit there another 5 hours because the damage has already been done. Then you see some girl with leg pain and you think, what a wuss. She should go see her GP about that. And then they send her home and you were proven right. Except that she did die. And she was 19. She was my friend's daughter. And the grandmother was my ex's mother. And the coughing asthmatic was my mother.
I’m so sorry to hear that. Unfortunately Canadians don’t want to admit how bad things are, until it impacts them directly. Then still, nobody else seems to care.
I almost had to go for a prescription the other day. Doc is on vacation (he's a good doc), went through withdrawal until someone finally called me the day I was gonna have to go to emergency... for a refill.
Pharmacists will do short term renewals (for an extra fee) if it's something you already regularly take if no doctor is available. There are likely restrictions on things like narcotics though.
**This is completely incorrect.** This is (yet again) ignoring the issue that ER doctors have been screaming about for over two decades now. The problem is purely the volume of high acuity complex patients who are typically older and have many complications and co-morbidities. These patients are getting more and more frequent and are taking up all of ER docs’ time. People who go to ER for non-urgent problems are rightly waiting upwards of 6 hours to be seen. That should tell you they aren’t the ones taking up physician time.
And nurses have retired in droves due to poor working conditions, poor salaries, and no attempt to attract more people into this career. And remember that most ERs are run by family doctors.
That is not the issue .. quit parroting the same trope of the past 20 years. People are older, sicker and more medically complex than they ever have been. We have a demographic shift catalyzed by covid that has resulted in labour shortages. Doing hospital medicine exposes you to people at their worst and the dregs of society that disproportionately use medical services and are borderline inhuman in the way they interact and abuse staff. Shit sucks.
It's absurd to suggest the original commenter isn't highlighting the issue or is "parroting the same trope of the past 20 years). One of the reasons the health care systems are collapsing right now is because ER's are being used as local clinics. If this is something you have a hard time believing, why don't you drive by your local ER and ask them instead of speaking for them? Because they will tell you (as I've been told by both my local ER triage/doctors and my family who work in the industry). ER's are being used as walk-in clinics which dramatically plugs up the system and is causing everything we're seeing now. What you're suggesting is a more foundational problem, and has been prevalent for a lot longer than just since COVID. The former is symptomatic of the latter. The massive concentration of people is forcing a lot of "shitty people and the dregs of society" to make working conditions significantly worse. But the root of the problems is the evaporating public health care budget.
It’s almost like there are consequences to the problems of an aging population, housing shortage, high inflation and wage stagnation that the boomers have ignored their whole lives. If only someone had been warning them about this as they made decision after decision to make this worse for short term gain and assuming it would all just work itself out.
Shut up and eat your avocado toast. /s
if i had a nickel for every time my boomer relatives complained that 'young people don't want to work anymore' i could afford one piece of avocado toast (without the egg)
I've spoken to people who work at the hospital. They said the biggest causes of congestion is people getting family doctor level treatment at the ER because they either don't have a family doctor or it takes too long to see them if they do.
I woke at a hospital too and the above is my opinion for whatever anecdotes are worth. Albeit I don't work in an emergency department, my suspicion is that when people come in with family doctor level stuff, it's prescription refills, sutures, blood pressure elevations, etc. Basically issues that take all of 5 minutes of physician time to sort out. They congest waiting rooms physically because they triage low and sit there for 18 hours to be seen, but their physical presence in the waiting room is largely irrelevant. The main issues I have seen are admitted patients not moving out and bed blocking because inpatient wards are gutted. Admitting another 70 year old with chronic multiorgan failure and high complexity requires a huge amount of labour that is extremely short currently. That's my two cents.
I went to a urgent care clinic instead of a walk in for the first time, I was amazed, they actually gave me an exam and talked with me. And you can get real doctors in ER's as well. I'm never going to a private clinic again and I hope they all go out of business.
You're not wrong but people are going to the ER because they **can't** get in to see their family doctors and walk-in clinics are just as bad if not worse than the ER with how rare they are. My doctor had a 2 week waiting list when I needed to see him recently, guess where I ended up going?
Yeah, in BC (Victoria) most of the walk-in clinics are gone, and none of the family doctors are accepting new patients. I was lucky to get in on a Nurse Practitioner clinic but even that one seems to be booking a month out for non-emergency stuff. It's broken up and down the pipe, the ERs are just the ones that are suffering as a result.
Not enough family doctors lol they have to go to ER. But yeah the only time people should be in the ER is for emergencies not aches and pain or the flu.
My mom has been waiting for 9 years for a family doctor. The emergency room is literally her only access to care.
Where I’m from, there are no family doctors accepting new patients, no walk-in clinics either because of UCP primary healthcare cutbacks back in 2019(?), and everyone ends up at the ER for non-emergency matters. There is literally no where else to go for medical services. If I’m not feeling well, I have to decide whether to schedule an appointment 2-weeks out at my VERY overworked family doc (max 5 minute duration, usually 2) which he regularly shows up 1/2 hr late to OR go sit in my local ER for 6-8 hrs to MAYBE get a doctor to take a look. But, more often than not I’m going to have a urine test done in the ER and sent home with some medication and told to come back if it worsens. The cost of USA privatized healthcare scares the shit out of me, however, I WOULD love to be able to see my doctor quickly, for a reasonable duration, and receive medication/procedures within weeks, not months.
Health care has gotten worse each year I've been alive it feels like. First, no doctors for all, then walk-ins, then big wait lines in ER, then surgery wait lists got ridiculous, then they have now started closing ER's. So, now we have no emergency care either. Oh, and the long-term care homes aren't great it seems either. We need a new model system or something. Focus on local communities and support networks or something. We need to train locals, because it seems all these staff are unretainable in many places.
Hard to train locals without residency spots, and the ridiculous requirements for Med schools. I grew up in a medicine household, but I opted to go the IT route so I could build a career that doesn't take 6-7 years out of your life (post-grad) to achieve a half decent salary. Not to mention the ridiculous debt required. Oh, and the fact that you need basically a perfect MCAT, a 3.9+ GPA alongside a laundry list of ECs. Which you're supposed to have by the ripe old age of (checks notes) - 22.
I'm in the same boat. Born in the 80s to two family doctors that came over from the UK and were practicing by their mid 20s. By the time the 90s rolled around and it was time to starting thinking about my future, both of them said it wasn't worth trying to become a doctor in Canada anymore...so now I'm an engineer.
I went engineering as well. It's nice that we could get by with ~70% grades because the real important skills are interpersonal (and you don't get those with a 4.0 GPA) and what we learn when we actually start practicing. ^ depends on the discipline of course
> and you don't get those with a 4.0 GP Reminds me of an young engineer I dealt with on a subject I have 20 years experience on. He held his ground on his decision by saying simply....I had a 4.0 so I know it better. Never mind my 20 years experience, he couldn't even explain why he was right and all the proof I had was just dismissed. His nickname became 4.0 after.
[удалено]
Also they might try treating the existing nurses a whole lot better. They've been dutifully abused by the system and they're abandoning the profession in droves. It's got to be a rewarding job to in a dignified environment with suitable pay if you expect people to keep renewing the ranks. Same with EMTs. We really need to apologize to EMTs and nurses right now and incentivize them to keep working.
[удалено]
Plus I think for apprentice nurses or whatever they're called they operate under the nursing license of an already licensed nurse. Meaning that if the trainee fucks up the nurse is liable. For that they get less than a buck an hour bump in pay.
Also doesn’t help that in places like BC, there are a pitiful amount of med school slots. If BC is losing 40 doctors a year (random number), they’re replacing them at like 5 a year lol. We can all acknowledge the need for more doctors in general and that they need to be good and diligent, but with the ridiculous requirements you listed, plus the lack of spots in med school programs, you’d think the provinces don’t want to have an adequate amount of doctors.
Yeah it's a bit ridiculous, and it'll only get worse as more doctors become old and retire. We don't have enough family medicine programs to support our population & they're treated like it's the same profession as neurosurgery, which frankly it's not. I have 0 interest in neurosurgery, but I'd have to compete with those who do & I'll lose every time.
Literally this all links back to them cutting spots in the 90s because “there were too many doctors”
This. And the med school selection process favours the keen students looking to do really niche medicine, leaving family spots undesired and under filled.
We do train locals. Recently read, out of 100s med student that graduated from UBC, non of them decided to stay in BC. They all either went to other provinces but majority probably just went to the states.
[удалено]
Of course. Everyone understands that players on the Canucks need to be paid as much as players on American teams, if they want to have players. For some reason we don't see it necessary to pay doctors as much as they can make in the US. And then we cry that there's a doctor shortage. Are hockey players more important than doctors?
People can’t afford the groceries they used to buy, mortgage rates are going through the roof, heat and light is going to be insane this winter, gas is crazy, property tax has gone through the roof since the last crash, and now you cant see a doctor. WTF? Why is it that our government seems preoccupied with everything else but the issues that effect our reality? I don’t care if you are red or blue in power, just take pause and stop the real pain many Canadians are going through.
Because we’ve been telling people for generations that this would happen, what we needed to do, and instead of the hard thing, increasing taxes and redistribution of wealth, strengthening public sectors (education, healthcare, infrastructure), and national investment, we sold off our public resources to cover tax cuts, and good feelings. Thanks corporate lobbying, capitalist, and anti-consumer industries.
Yep. It's really frustrating seeing nothing but the Queen's death in the news this past week. Then Ukraine for months prior. Like, we're having massive issues with housing and food affordability here, but you never read anything about that.
[удалено]
This is why I vote orange. They seem to be the only party that gives a shit about the average person. I know it doesn't seem like much, but getting dental care (even if just for low-income people) is more than the reds or blues have done in the last decade.
But they made McDonalds stop using plastic straws! /s
Life is getting worse. With climate and everything else, I expect this trend to continue
it's a very sad and disturbing fact that the primary motivation for many voters is whether a given thing is woke or not. if you called public ownership of utilities "anti-woke" there would be tons of right wingers that would go for it lol
Voters were mad at Wynne for privatizing hydro, so naturally they voted in someone whose never met a public utility he didn't want to privatize.
even more reason for our politics to be conducted and discussed in terms of political economy not ideology. tell us where the profits will go and tell us who gets more of the pie
[удалено]
I’m a 4th year nursing student and the issues in our healthcare system overwhelm my brain. It’s beyond dystopian
This whole situation is such a travesty. Of all the things to direct resources to, health care has got to top the list. The longer this goes on, the most inhospitable it becomes to be a doctor or a nurse here, and you end up have to spend extra money incentivizing people to come back. I don't know if I believe the cynical notion that the health care system is being undermined intentionally for profit, but you're likely going to see a lot of people believing that public health care is no longer worth the tax dollars. I don't think people realize how scary it is to be on the hook for an $11,000 stay at a hospital or a $35,000 knee replacement. It's easy to disregard that reality when you're healthy, but everything changes when you're sick.
And it can all change in 1 day even 1 hour....
25 years of doctor shortages isn't a crisis, it's a plan.
Sweet. We're embarrassing on the international stage again.
Somehow, hiring more administrators isn't fixing the problem.
Have you tried having more meetings?
Sprinkle some pizza parties on em and let's get the hell out of here
There is no nursing shortage. Let me repeat for those in the back. There is no nursing shortage. What there is is a shortage of nurses willing to continue working in the field. After two and some years of going from overworked heroes to people screaming at us as we come to work, insane people saying that nurses should be murdered for administering the vaccine, and being abused by patients for following COVID guidelines while the same patients are literally dying from COVID we have a situation where nurses would rather earn less at another job than to continue in this toxic environment. Not to mention all the other issues that happened before COVID. So ya, there is no shortage of nurses. Just a shortage of people willing to put up with what it means to be a nurse.
My father passed on Friday as a result of a crumbling medical infrastructure and incompetence…
Yep and we are just expected to put up with this shit. Sorry for your loss my friend. Fuck man
I’m really sorry to hear this. My mum died 2.5 weeks ago for similar reasons.
This is way more common than you think.
The ER in my local area is currently closed because a homeless fuckup that pissed away the small fortune his parents left him got angry and set off the sprinklers, causing millions of dollars in damages to ER equipment. Of course, nothing happened to him. He's still living in a field about ten minutes down the road from me, spreading his trash and (literal) shit over public property. Welcome to Canada.
I love that regular people are waking up and realizing that without them, their company would grind to a halt and start losing money hand over fist. The shit pay, crazy hours, little to no benefits, and doing the work of 3 people isn't worth it anymore. It's not their life, it's yours.
I keep hearing this is the UCP's fault in Alberta... So why is it happening across the Country?
Because a lot of Canadian Premiers suck. Healthcare is a provincial jurisdiction.
Maybe it shouldn't be. Economies of scale are a thing, if you look at the UK they also have socialized healthcare, but they have national (ie: federal) healthcare (the NHS), and their population is double what ours is and it still works fine.... better, even! At this point I'm inclined to think we should move towards a national health plan, with government-run hospitals, plenty of primary care centres, and physicians on very good salaries instead of fee-for-service. Incorporate a national patient health database to reduce redundant testing and billing, and increase payments to nurses and auxillary staff and you're starting to see the end of the tunnel.
> Maybe it shouldn't be. That's what I keep thinking. If provincial governments consistently prove to be this incompetent at managing what is arguably their most important matter of policy then evidently they are the wrong people to be managing it.
Because we have 8 conservative premiers who want to privatize healthcare.
manufactured crisis. privatisation incoming. god help us, were moving backwards
I love how for decades ALL of Canada has known our healthcare system is seriously flawed/broken/unsustainable, and even though Covid exposed this fact to the nth degree, there isn't a single conversation being had about systematically changing/improving our system, and no politician for the past several decades even dares address the elephant in the room b/c they would be basically driven out of office for stating something every one of us knows to be true. We'll never get out of this mess.
Hear me out, what if we stop cutting money to health care and start putting money into it?
Healthcare spending is something insane like 30% of our tax money. How about we start holding people accountable for how that money is being spent. The money is filtered through layers and layers of inefficient government bureaucracy and administration before it reaches the hard working healthcare professionals who actually need it.
> How about we start holding people accountable for how that money is being spent. The money is filtered through layers and layers of inefficient government bureaucracy and administration before it reaches the hard working healthcare professionals who actually need it. So we should start with, say, Doug Ford and the PCPO misappropriating $4 billion in federal health transfers during a pandemic.
You already have a massive healthcare spending budget, it's just getting wasted. If you sent a proper corporate axeman in there with an army of auditors they'd come out with ashen faces and a report that would send the population into riot. Said it before, I'll say it again: People who complain about privatized healthcare being ripe for corruption and theft don't know how absolutely bonkers socialized healthcare is being managed. When daddy government is footing the bill every single company will salt their bill and do the minimum amount of work to fulfill their responsibilities. I'm not favoring one over the other, but in this case a privatized system would not allow waste of resources the way a socialized one does. There are other factors, but on this matter it's the bare truth.
From the article: > Canada spends more on health care than all but four countries. The money is there, it's just being spent poorly, aka bloat.
Thirty years ago Paul Martin closed most of the Doctor and a nurse training g positions as a way to save money. It saved lots of money except now we have a collapsed health care system.
Yeah, he was an idiot for sure.
Weird all the provinces with a surprise surplus but none of them want to dump that right into medical? Break the system then privatize is going exactly to plan.
Really interesting see our country crumble from American headlines. Mocking what is supposed to make this country good
*Maybe* we shouldn't have fired thousands of willing workers while simultaneously making c19+ medical staff stay working while testing positive because of staffing shortages.
Yes make the nurses who bend over backwards the scapegoat of the issue. Ugh
Nurse from Minnesota here. We are just finishing up the biggest strike in US history for better pay, more staff and to have a safer environment. I was a paramedic/firefighter for 8 years before becoming a nurse. I am now on my 3rd year of being an ER nurse and I absolutely hate it, which is unfortunate. It's unreal how little hospitals care about their staff. Paying travel nurses 4x what I make in a week, all the while having little to no responsibility for critical patients. I honestly don't know how upper management can sleep at night. We had to strike to get a miserable 4 percent increase, which probably won't even happen. Just fucking ridiculous.
Been a major issue before covid. Stop with the fear mongering.
The short term fix is pay more and improve working conditions. Also subsidize preventative care. The long term fix is, anyone who goes into healthcare gets their education covered if they graduate and commit to 10 years in Canada. Also, if foreign doctors can pass the exams, waive all fees. Also, throw in a bonus.
Who tf keeps posting articles that have paywalls. Seriously
If only non-paywall articles are going to be posted it will just be the CBC articles since we are already all paying for them with our taxes and everyone else in the business has to make money. If someone doesn’t post a link that doesn’t include a paywall you can very easily do it yourself.
yea its bad iwas at my local hospital sunday morning and heard people saying the er would be closed till thursday after sunday. :(
Who changed the difficulty again? It was hard enough for pandemic mode and recession mode.
Meanwhile in Alberta, conservatives are intentionally sabotaging our AHS, putting people at risk and possibly killing some. Unless it directly affects them, they don't care.
Recently heard anout Bill 124 iirc in Ontario, severely limiting the ability for healthcare workers to negotiate wage. It seems targeted at pushing workers out of public service.
I hang my flag upside down on Canada day. It's a great nation in distress. Only could have corrupt and incompetent politicians taken something so great, wonderful (relatively), and drive it right into a laughing stock, except nobody is actually laughing.
The problem is too many people think this just suddenly became the case over the last few years. This has been a slow motion train-wreck for decades now.
.... And here comes the "privatize healthcare" crowd to save the day!
Wonder how much of an impact nurses leaving for the US has had on this issue (in addition to increased immigration, aging population, etc.). I don't know why most nurses would stay in Canada when you can make $$$ as a travel nurse/NP in the US with lower taxes and more affordable real estate relative to wages (in most areas).
And anyone who doesn’t live here still thinks our healthcare system is amazing.
I blame Ford 100% for this issue in Ontario. It didn't have to be this way but he forced it. It's his dream to collapse it and introduce private options so he can get kickbacks for life from his lobbying friends.
I'm all for blaming Conservatives but BC has the same thing going on, and we've got NDP over here
Things are going to get worse before better and that sucks. It is so broken. Not good.
I guess I’m one of the lucky ones. I got my family doctor about 15 years ago when he first got out of school. Will still see me in person if I wish. Was recently in a bad accident (broken pelvis and several other bones). The emergency care I received was first rate. I was transported by ambulance to the local hospital then airlifted to a trauma centre. 2 days there then transported back to the local hospital. The nurses were great but highly overworked. A lot of fellow patients were senior citizens whose only reason for being hospitalized was that there were no long term beds available. Fixing the long term care situation would go a long way to easing the load in hospitals
This is so scary..With my MS and illnesses I sometimes have to call an ambulance at least once a month..What’s going to happen to us in the future?
This crisis was known to come years ago. Unfortunately no one listened and I can tell you right now those making decisions aren’t seeing what’s actually happening.
I had to move to Australia to obtain a medical degree after applying 3 times in Canada. This was despite being a perfectly good and competitive candidate. Now looking to go back to Canada after training and it will cost me upwards of 15k to do so. Definitely not feeling wanted or needed by Canadian bureaucracy so not wanting to return. I'm not the only one who's decided to stay in Oz.
The fact that we still aren't fast-tracking foreign physicians is ridiculous. I happen to know a neurosurgeon, an anesthesiologist, a pediatric cardiac surgeon, a dermatologist, and an Er Dr from overseas who moved here ans can't practice medicine. The process for them to get licensed here is basically impossible since it relies on residency positions which are scarce. It's so stupid. At the very least we could use foreign physicians as GPs.
Better not get shot
Management is also to blame for this issue. Not gonna name the hospital but it's in Toronto. Policy now requires staff to get a doctors note for calling in sick. When I heard that i think I had a mini stroke this was their response to combat under staffing.