Mark Degasperis was furious his mother spent five days on a stretcher at Toronto Western Hospital waiting for a room with 25 patients ahead of her — until the Toronto Sun made a call and she was suddenly moved to a room yesterday.
“They were giving us the same old song and dance why she was in the emergency department with only a sheet draped around her. I couldn’t even call her because she didn’t have a phone,” Degasperis of Georgetown said.
Heather Degasperis, 60, has a dangerous bacterial condition and was sent by her doctor to Toronto Western because it has the experts for her condition.
“She is not well and wasn’t able to sleep and she wasn’t getting any better. She needed peace and quiet to sleep.
“This is a terrible environment. I suggested taking her to another hospital, but we were told there are long waits across the region and the doctors we need are here. So there was nothing we could do,” Degasperis said yesterday.
“I’m angry we pay such high taxes and the more money we throw at the health care system the worse it gets. People shouldn’t be lined up on stretchers in the emergency department. If you are sick you should get a room.”
……Dr. Bob Bell, president and CEO of the University Health Network, which includes Toronto Western, said the problem of overcrowding has nothing to do with the emergency department.
“The problem is the flow of patients in the hospital. What we need is an alternative level of care for folks who are not ready to go home but don’t need acute care,” Bell said.
“We are trying desperately to improve the experience folks have, but we need more capacity in the community.”
Link: http://www.torontosun.com/News/TorontoAndGTA/2008/05/23/5646336-sun.html
Uh no, Doctor. The problem is Canada’s socialized medicine. It’s not working real well in Cuba, either.
The problem with the universal ‘free’ health care, is that it isn’t ‘free’. Someone always foots the bill, and that someone is the overburdened taxpayer.
More insight on socialized medicine:
One basic problem with nationalized health care is that it makes medical services seem free. That pushes demand beyond supply. Governments deal with that by limiting what’s available.
That’s why the British National Health Service recently made the pathetic promise to reduce wait times for hospital care to four months.
The wait to see dentists is so long that some Brits pull their own teeth. Dental tools: pliers and vodka.
One hospital tried to save money by not changing bed sheets every day. British papers report that instead of washing them, nurses were encouraged to just turn them over.
Government rationing of health care in Canada is why when Karen Jepp was about to give birth to quadruplets last month, she was told that all the neonatal units she could go to in Canada were too crowded. She flew to Montana to have the babies.
“People line up for care; some of them die. That’s what happens,” Canadian doctor David Gratzer, author of The Cure, told “20/20”. Gratzer thought the Canadian system was great until he started treating patients. “The more time I spent in the Canadian system, the more I came across people waiting. … You want to see your neurologist because of your stress headache? No problem! You just have to wait six months. You want an MRI? No problem! Free as the air! You just gotta wait six months.”
……Most Canadians like their free health care, but Canadian doctors tell us the system is cracking. More than a million Canadians cannot find a regular family doctor. One town holds a lottery. Once a week the town clerk gets a box out of the closet. Everyone who wants to have a family doctor puts his or her name in it. The clerk pulls out one slip to determine the winner. Others in town have to wait.
……Canadians stuck on waiting lists often pay “medical travel agents” to get to America for treatment. Shirley Healey had a blocked artery that kept her from digesting food. So she hired a middleman to help her get to a hospital in Washington state.
“The doctor said that I would have only had a very few weeks to live,” Healey said.
Yet the Canadian government calls her surgery “elective.”
“The only thing elective about this surgery was I elected to live,” she said.
Want potential life-saving treatment for that medical condition?
Sign in, have a seat in the waiting room, and we’ll get to you in about a year.