Canada's health care under scrutiny and criticism by report.

[[]Doo[]Der]

Canada's HEALTH CARE can certainly be faulted when it comes to waiting times in the ER
Some waits are up to 28 hours!

Having had a personal experience,(wife with extreme back pain laying on an ambulance gurney for near 5 hours before seeing a doctor and all that time the ambulance and attendant was obliged to stay with her until admitted to the ER.)Then more time to get a room and tests/treatment.

With an aging population this can only get worse unless it is addressed.
How can this be acceptable???

Excerpts, more at link. (Emphasis mine.)

hours of cooling one’s heels before being assessed by a doctor, treated and released. For most patients, that process takes long enough, 7.5 hours or less on average, says a report released Tuesday. But for the 10% of patients who need to be admitted, those waits can be much longer, with one in 10 of those requiring an in-hospital stay waiting in an emergency department more than 28 hours before getting transferred to a bed.
The report by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) found seniors are among those with the longest wait times: one-quarter of those aged 65 and older who visit an ER need to be admitted, and one in 10 of them are kept in the emergency department more than 31 hours before getting a bed.

Reacting to Tuesday’s report, Dr. Alan Drummond suggested it’s shameful that ER patients who are considered sick enough to need admission “have to spend an inordinate amount of time getting inadequate care in the emergency department.”
Dr. Drummond, a spokesman for the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, said patients can spend 12, 24, even 36 hours in the ER waiting to be transferred to a ward or the ICU.
“[Patients] are put in a back hallway, brightly lit. They have no privacy, no toileting facilities. Their basic human needs are unmet, largely because emerg staff are trained to deal with the constant flow of sick people.”

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/1...more-than-28-hours-for-10-of-patients-report/

 

[Debby]

I've usually been lucky the few times I've had to go to the ER. I think the longest I ever had to wait was a couple hours or less. That's why I work real hard on staying healthy. Eat right, get enough exercise....whatever it takes to avoid the hospital!

Wasn't there a major study done recently or maybe I'm thinking of some article that I read that pointed to abysmal wait times at our hospitals compared to those in Britain and some European countries? On the other hand, there are opinions out there like this: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111721651 that while acknowledging the problems also point to our successes. I guess it's a mixed bag. But you're right, as more of us age, this may become an even bigger issue. At least in the ER.

 

[d0ug]

I remember waiting in the ER for hours when I lived in Canada. It is a refreshing change where I live now you go into the ER and you might be the only person there or the wait is in minuets. There is some benefits in living in the third world.