Default More About Canada's Failed Health Care System.
On November 2, 2015, an elderly man presented himself at the emergency room of St. Mary’s Hospital in Montreal, complaining of severe abdominal pain. He lost consciousness; an ultrasound revealed an aortic aneurism, likely accompanied by severe internal bleeding.
The patient needed immediate surgery. Instead of operating, the hospital transferred him by ambulance to another institution. He died before he could be treated there.
Why wouldn’t St. Mary’s operate on this critically ill patient? Because the requisite procedure was deemed “eccentric to the mission” of the hospital. Translation: It was no longer performed there, even though a vascular surgeon was on call at the time and could have saved the man’s life.
Tragically, this isn’t the first time such a policy has killed a patient. At a press conference last October, Ontario doctors decried the health care rationing which resulted in the death of a terminally-ill patient in the emergency room. In Saskatchewan, a hospital is under investigation after a man with heart disease died after waiting three and a half hours in the ER complaining of chest pains. Earlier that year, in P.E.I., a woman recounted how her father-in-law died after waiting days for an ambulance to transport him to another hospital for treatment.
In 2014, a Fraser Institute report on wait times and mortality found that, between 1994 and 2009, “increases in wait times for medically necessary elective treatment may be associated with 44,273 additional female deaths … (representing) 2.5 per cent of total female deaths during the period or 1.2 per cent of total mortality (male and female) during the period.” For non life-threatening procedures, such as knee or hip surgery, over-long wait times are also routine, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information; while they may not mean death, they do lead to prolonged agony, lost productivity and dependency on pain medication.
open quote 761b1bHealth authorities and hospitals impose rationing to stay within budget. Meanwhile, Canadians with the money to do so take it outside the country to spend on private alternatives.
So it’s no surprise that more and more Canadians are seeking care outside the country. Another Fraser study found that 52,523 patients travelled outside the country to obtain medical treatment in 2014, up from 41,838 patients in 2013. The main reasons were delays in obtaining treatment, followed by a desire to obtain state-of-the-art care.
https://ipolitics.ca/2016/01/11/time...is-flatlining/
