OHIP: Questions need to be answered by the Politicians and the Public

This is election time in Canada and I am surprised that none of our politician is talking about our deteriorating health system.

I read the article “Don’t mess with our Medicare” in “Toronto Star”, and the comments made by many people, some of them are the real victims of our poorly managed medical system. I think we must reorganize the system because the medicare system was designed as per the requirement of 1969, but today the situation is totally different. Every year more than 200,000 new immigrants are coming to Canada in the hope of getting better life including good healthcare system but the facilities are not increasing in that ratio and what ever we have we are not using them properly.

I am one of the victims of our disorganized medical system and today I want to ask few questions (followed by some suggestions) to our politicians and the policy makers. The questions are based on the real bad experiences I had in last few years mostly last year.

Ist Bad Experience: Bad Management

I saw the patients waiting 6-7 hrs.to be seen by the Dr. in emergency so called "Fast Track” and the reason for this waiting time was not the availability of the doctor.

Now can you guess what can be the reason why the patients in emergency have to wait so long if the availability of the doctor is not the issue because that’s what has been told by our politicians and social workers from last few years. I will tell you the reason; it was the un-availability of the room for the patient where the Doctor normally sees the patient.
This is a real incident faced by me and why only me everyday hundreds of patients have to go through this problem in emergencies at our hospitals and the walk in clinics. Did any of our politicians have ever paid attention to this problem in our hospitals?

This is the case, I witnessed about six months back at William Osler Health Centre in Etobicoke. I had a burning around my neck at work and arrived Hospital at around 3.30 PM and waited till 7.30PM to see the doctor. At this time I met with a patient whose finger was crushed at work and was waiting in “Fast Track” since 1.00PM. When we checked with the nurse why it is taking too long, the surprising answer was the un-availability of the rooms to take the patients. Now the question is what should be the priority separate room to wait for the doctor or the fast treatment to save the precious parts of the body, relief in pain or even the life of the patient? If you ask these questions to a patient for him the priority will always be to see the doctor and get treatment as soon as possible.

The Doctor normally spent 5 minutes with a patient for this kind of problems but for those 5 minutes patients have to wait 5-6 hrs. Because of the un-availability of room. Why we don’t change our system in such a way that the priority is always given to the patient’s treatment and not to the comfort of the hospital staff. After the Triage it can be decided whether the patient needs a room or can be directly seen by the doctor on a chair so that the patient don’t have to wait for the room. I don't think any patient will ask for a room when he/she is suffering from pain.

In this way the line-up at emergency can be reduced by more than half and also we can utilize the expensive resources and services of highly paid hospital staff in a better way.


2nd Bad Experience: Disobeying the Human Rights

First of all I want to ask a simple question to everyone, What will be your preference if you are in a situation that you can loose one hand or one eye or one ear or any of your body part if you don’t get the treatment on time would you like to get the treatment at any cost or look for the money saving for the rest of your body?

This is one of the biggest problems of our Medicare system, because our system makes the patients completely helpless. Mr. Anne Dalton written in “Toronto Star” that “who can afford to pay extra for treatment can still cross the border for private care” and in the same article he also complained about the delay in his appointments for MRI’s and to see the specialist for treatment and that he was lucky that his problem was not life threatening.
Now the question is if Mr. Dalton’s problem would have been life threatening would he like to wait here to die or he will go to USA for treatment? If yes then why we have to go to USA or some other country in this kind of situation why we can’t have a parallel medicare system for these kind of situations where at least the patient will get the treatment on time.

I am also passing through the same situation and I can’t go across the border or anywhere else because I can’t fly with ruptured ear. My ear drum got ruptured and I had surgery done 2-months back but still I am not feeling well and I have lost faith in the ENT specialist who did the surgery (to know the reason you need to read the whole story below), I can’t get the appointment with any other specialist and I don’t have any option left. Now in this situation if I will have option to go to any private ENT specialist I could have used it, doesn’t really matter how much money I will have to pay for that and I am sure if you do a survey of patients (strictly patients because it’s easy to comment anything when you are healthy) the answer will be the same because no one would like to loose the part of a body for money if there is even 1% possibility to save that. The question is why we don’t have such a system where the patient will have liberty to get the treatment on time when required.

From last six months I am suffering from the ear problem. The problem started with infection in the ear and visited the ENT specialist. He gave me some antibiotic medicines and the problem was cured but not 100%, the infection disappears from out side but was still alive behind the drum, looks like since beginning the infection was behind the drum and Doctor never told me about that. I was feeling that something was not right but in the mean time I had to travel and the infection re-appeared during my visit. So I took some antibiotics there and the ear was dried again. After coming back I visited ENT and he told me that your drum got ruptured and you need a surgery.

I had no option left and I booked the appointment for surgery. After the surgery I visited the doctor 2 times and on my second visit the doctor told me to came back after 2 months. But I had some pain and I felt that there is something wrong so I visited the doctor and was surprised to hear that “ I treat what I see” means he don’t care what the patient is feeling. Again I tried to explain but this time the answer was same but more rudely “ I treat what I see, I don’t guess”. So that means, our system doesn’t allow him to treat as per the patient condition and the patient feelings.

If there is so much restriction of our system on the doctors why we don’t provide the doctors enough resources to check and do all the tests required to diagnose the problem properly so that the patient get the proper treatment. It happened in my case why the doctor didn’t perform some tests to know what I was feeling if he don’t want to guess. I am sure there must be some way to diagnose if you don’t see the problem by your eyes otherwise how we find out the diseases like cancer, stones, HIV etc.
Anyway, after listening these words from my ENT specialist I completely lost faith in him and started looking for some other specialist to get the second opinion. This was a big challenge because none of the specialist has dates available before Dec.08. One of the ENT told that if your family doctor will directly talk to the ENT specialist there is possibility that you may get the early appointment so I talked to my family doctor and asked the doctor to call the specialist but the answer from the Specialist was that they don’t consider my situation as an emergency and no early appointment was given. I have appointment with another ENT specialist for 7Th Jan.09 if the ear will remain alive for the checkup at that time.

3rd Bad Experience: Waste of Taxpayer’s Money

During my problem with ear infection I visited the emergency ward at William Osler Health Centre in Etobicoke and the doctor recommended to give Antibiotics through I.B.
And arranged a nurse to visit my home for 10 days. Next day I received a box full of medicines and syringes. This was on weekend and I visited the ENT specialist on Monday and the Doctor told me that I don’t need this Antibiotics and he wrote me some antibiotics pills and removed the I.B. I called the number given by the nurse who was visiting me and told them that I don’t need that medication and they can take all the medicines back. But they told me to dispose off all the medicines because they don’t have any provision to take the medicines back. They will only take back there stand and some needles out of the box.
So the medicines worth more than $1000 were disposed off. This was the money drained out from our pocket.

If in our medicare system we don’t have a provision to take the medicines back from the patients home than why we don’t make a provision that the visiting nurse will pick the required medicines/equipment from the distribution center or hospital everyday for all the patients she will visit in one day. In that case we can save millions of dollars of medicine just we have to change our thinking.

I fully agree with you. I have had smiliar / worse experiences during my stay in hospitals.
In India, almost 90% of the doctors are good whereas in Canada around 20% are good. The rest are just useless. Wonder what their curriculam is.
We have beauracrats who run the health care system who have never left Canada to see how advanced it is in other parts of the world incl. India. Since it is tax payers money, lot of time is allocated to paper work, hierarchy etc.... while patient treatment time is less. A wonder is that many CD's and Canadians (born in Canada) think that the system is great.
Wonder when change will come.

Peace by TK

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I am a Gents and not a Ladies.

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Originally posted by tamilkuravan

Wonder what their curriculam is.
Peace by TK

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