Tangentially, I recently moved to Canada and was surprised by the lack of quality healthcare..
Literally could not believe some walk ins have paper files and use fax, plus finding a GP apparently is a months long quest.
Visiting a specialist took ages, and I wouldn’t say it was the best / most modern infrastructure there either.
(And I went in downtown Toronto, must be so much worse for more remote places I guess).
In the end we kind of shunned the public system and decided to go private healthcare instead. But (luckily) have not really had to take advantage of it)
Yeah, I've grown up hearing constantly how good our (Canada) health care is. The reality is less than stellar. There are so, so many stories from literally everyone in my family of just straight up negligence and permanent adverse effects of malpractice.
My friend's mom lost her legs because the hospital didn't keep her in the right position after a surgery and circulation was cut off while she was recovering from the surgery. Huge lawsuit, but that doesn't take back the irreversible damage and lifelong disability.
Recently a doctor lied to our face and said there's no alternative to surgery, then lied to our face again when he said "that medication doesn't work for that", until we cited multiple studies and how the medication is used worldwide for the purpose we are asking for. It's just disgusting and unacceptable.
Also recently another family member nearly died in hospital as they let his weight get down to ~80lbs. They incorrectly thought he had cancer (he didn't), and they were just going to let him die because his time was limited, suggesting to the family not to bother with a feeding tube. The family insisting on trying the feeding tube saved his life, _against_ the suggestions of the doctor(s). He would be dead right now, and a family would have lost their dad, if they hadn't insisted on doing it. I'm pushing the family to sue the hospital and report this malpractice because his health is so badly harmed by having gone to such a low weight and nearly dying from it.
Honestly I can just go on all day. When I got in a car accident my broken wrist/finger were secured in place with a fucking tongue depressor and some gauze. This was the official solution because they didn't have time to put my wrist in a cast, so I went numerous days with this ridiculous solution, reducing the quality of my bone/joint healing. My pinky finger is still, forever, crooked. Really nice for someone whose career requires typing (programmer).
Similarly, another family member of mine has a permanently-deformed arm because they didn't cast the arm correctly and the bone healed crooked.
I'm Canadian, east coast. Our Health Care system is garbage and a lot of people end up going to private hospitals because the public sector can't handle the load, even pre-covid.
People have repeatedly died waiting in hospital halls waiting for care that never came.
Our healthcare system has almost nothing to be taken example of
A friend got a head injury (kid kicked her on the ear pretty hard) and had to wait about 5 hours in the ER before they could see her, they sent her home saying it would be nothing bad. Two days later she went back and they concluded she had a concussion..
A man recently died of a heart attack in my local ER’s waiting room 10 minutes after showing up complaining about heart pain. The only reason he died is they didn’t have enough staff on hand. This was a couple of months ago, in the US. A few nurses walked out crying and never came back when it happened. My sister used to work at the hospital as a nurse and she quit because of similar things that were a regular occurrence. It’s all about saving money. “Just In Time” healthcare.
Is there really a "Canadian health care system"? I feel like it heavily differs between provinces/territories. It also depends on whether where on the spectrum from urban to rural you live, don't you think?
I can see any specialist (almost any GP) and they'll get limited time access to my entire patient history. I don't have to worry of getting a second opinion from someone who "doesn't have my history".
Plus, I get insight into this data myself through an app (or web platform), where I can view the scans and take them to someone outside of the network if I want to.
Pharmacies will also start sharing data, so a GP can enter the data in a system which any Pharmacy can then enter (with your electronic ID), so no need for paper subscriptions either.
Well... not really paper files. As of a few years ago, it was mandated that provides maintain digital records. They could still send paper, but most seem to use disc and myChart stuff. And yes, fax is still prevalent as well (mostly legal compliance reasons in my opinion).
Honestly? I don't want the medical system to be "modernized". The advantage of paper files is it's much harder for a security breach at a single facility to lead to everyone's records being leaked to every bad actor out there.
"Modern" industries like social media tend to leak personal information like a sieve.
I guess I’ll provide a counterpoint that I have been incredibly impressed with the quality of Canadian healthcare after my sister had kidney failure, was on dialysis for a year, then received a timely transplant from me and neither of us paid a dime. This was in Manitoba. She still has to pay for her medication, though - hopefully pharmacare passes in the near future.
Meanwhile down here in the US I was charged $150 after going to an urgent care clinic for strep throat. They couldn’t tell me how much it would cost ahead of time.
Also, due to a temporary billing error in the Manitoba hospital (everything was supposed to be charged to my sister's insurance, but some things weren't by mistake) the hospital's billing department half-assedly pursued me for payment for a renal ultrasound. The bill was fifteen (Canadian) dollars.
> Meanwhile down here in the US I was charged $150 after going to an urgent care clinic for strep throat.
To be honest, I don't think it is unreasonable to pay $150 for a nurse's/doctor's time to examine you. I've gone to urgent care and the ER a few times, and they're always filled with people who are there for non-issues. If it was totally free, you'd have them filled with people with things that should really just be handled by a regular doctor's appointment.
Hell, my local hospital had to make a public statement for people to stop going to the ER just to get COVID tests.
Sucks that it's so difficult for you to find a family doctor but it does depend on where you live, for sure. Personally, I don't care if they have paper files, as long as, in the case of BC, the data ends up in Health Gateway [1] somehow and is accessible by whatever doctor I'm seeing. Generally I must say though that I'm quite happy with the quality of health care here where I live which is small city-ish.
Seeing specialists can take a long time that's right. I had a torn achilles tendon and it took almost 3 months to see a specialist with couple of days notice and no communication in between. That sucked. For my elderly parents in law it seems to be going much faster to see specialists so it might depend on severity.
> plus finding a GP apparently is a months long quest.
> Visiting a specialist took ages, and I wouldn't say it was the best / most modern infrastructure there either.
> In the end we kind of shunned the public system and decided to go private healthcare instead. But (luckily) have not really had to take advantage of it)
I hope you can at least deduct it from your taxes else it means you end up paying what, 60% taxes on top of having to purchase private insurance with your post-tax dollars?
That's ridiculous. Here I pay a much lower tax rate and it took me a few clicks to just get a GP.
The only reason US doctors all have computers/etc is because of the feds gave health care providers a big tax credit towards electronic record keeping during the Obama years. And then medicare basically made it really hard to continue to get paper reimbursements/etc.
I'm pretty sure the vast number of smaller clinics/etc would all still be on paper if not for those incentives because it was a pretty noticeable change over just a couple years.
>Tangentially, I recently moved to Canada and was surprised by the lack of quality healthcare..
This is very complex and absolutely hilarious when American democrats think of Canada as a better solution.
>Literally could not believe some walk ins have paper files and use fax, plus finding a GP apparently is a months long quest.
We have very good laws in place protecting health information. $10,000 tort damages for leaking health infos and then much larger fines for more problematic issues.
Some hospitals try to do the right thing and will have high security maturity. The other hospitals basically do the opposite. They forcefully will not secure their systems and save the money and put it in a fund to pay out the inevitable breach.
>Visiting a specialist took ages, and I wouldn’t say it was the best / most modern infrastructure there either.
Canada's healthcare system is tiered. You have the public single payer which is trash at best. Virtually all employers pay for health benefits which bring you to the 2nd tier. This gets you into a ward and such. There's a 3rd tier where you get good service, private rooms, skip lines. If you work in public sector or a big union you most likely are on this 3rd tier. The final tier is for the people whose names are on the wards. The "Such and such family ward" because they donated significant money to the hospital. These people get immediate access to everything you might expect. Nicest rooms. everything.
>(And I went in downtown Toronto, must be so much worse for more remote places I guess).
85% of Canadians live in urban areas near to the US border. If you choose to live somewhere else, you know you're living far from civilization and already accept the lack of service.
>In the end we kind of shunned the public system and decided to go private healthcare instead. But (luckily) have not really had to take advantage of it)
dont get me wrong. I dont mind our tiered system. ohip covers the basics which everyone should get coverage for. Break your arm? taxpayers/rich pay to fix it. 2nd tier is plenty for most people. 3rd tier is nice but most people dont realize it exists. Ive had a lady talking to me about how she has to wait many months to get in to a specialist, the same specialist that I waited a whole 3 days for. Also yes, the billionaire folks are going to get the best treatment, it's no surprise.
Literally could not believe some walk ins have paper files and use fax, plus finding a GP apparently is a months long quest.
Visiting a specialist took ages, and I wouldn’t say it was the best / most modern infrastructure there either.
(And I went in downtown Toronto, must be so much worse for more remote places I guess).
In the end we kind of shunned the public system and decided to go private healthcare instead. But (luckily) have not really had to take advantage of it)
/rant