Results from the 2004 National
Report Card on the Sustainability of Health Care came
just in time for the Canadian Medical Association (CMA)
annual meeting, and things aren't looking so good. The
vast majority (91%) of Canadians think the feds have the
means to pony up for better healthcare, but choose not
to. And a pretty darned big majority of us (78%) believe
the provinces could do more to pay for health services
as well. So much for the Premiers for Healthcare campaign.
About 70% of Canadians believe
that rapid delivery of essential health services trumps
covering a broader range of procedures. Queue fatigue
is another big issue for Canadians; all told, 97% of
those polled feel medicare should offer timely essential
services.
Less than half (45%) of Canadians
think our system, as is, deserves anything higher than
a B grade. While a strong majority of respondents gives
our system passing marks, it's clear that medicare is
losing points due to pokey delivery times. The CMA-sponsored
poll was conducted in July and had a sample size of
1,057 with a 3.1% margin of error.
CAN
YOU SPARE A BILLION?
Meanwhile over at the annual meeting, CMA president
Dr Sunil Patel gave a speech urging Ottawa to cough
up $1 billion over five years to hire more doctors and
nurses. The CMA proposes a Health Human Resources Reinvestment
Fund to handle the cash. Dr Patel believes better HR
work is needed to avoid "the boom-and-bust planning
cycle that we've seen in the last three decades."
The CMA recently released a report
that shows the breadth of the doctor shortage. At 2.1
physicians per 1,000 people, Canada is falling well
behind other industrial countries in doctor coverage.
Canada's MD/patient ratio ranks a miserable 25th out
of 30 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD) member states.
First,
Do No Harm
In a rousing speech, Dr Peter Norton, who heads the
University of Calgary Family Medicine Department, urged
doctors to do their bit to avoid adverse events. He
argued that miscommunication between caregivers is one
of the leading causes of adverse events.
It won't help matters that Canada's
hospital record keeping is still, to a large extent,
done on paper. Sadly, when new cash comes in, it's usually
swallowed up by the backlog of pricey procedures that
need to be done. Typically, money to improve patient
record databases is rarely left in the jar.
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