BC Healthcare Nightmare
I have spent a little bit more time than I want in hospitals this year. Not me personally in the hospital but visiting others who have the misfortune to require surgery and care. It is very clear to me that there is serious problems with the system! Sure, we watch the news and we hear the tale of a person or family that complains how the health care system has failed them. You have a brief moment of angst, empathy and then it is on to the next story. It isn’t until you see it for yourself that you realize “Hey! Something is very wrong here!”
My brother-in-law was admitted to Mission Hospital to address a severe gall bladder attack, he was given some medication, told to book an appointment with his doctor and was released. Complications arose due to a lack of urgency with his initial complaint of symptoms, so when he went to his doctors office jaundice and having difficulty breathing he was readmitted to the hospital. From there it was determined that he required EMERGENCY SURGERY and would need to be transferred to Royal Columbian Hospital. That was three weeks ago.
He is still in the hospital due to multiple errors. No surgery occurred in a timely manner which made his situation worse. He was deemed by one Doctor not be a priority and as such was relegated to the hallway with fashioned bed linens tied to IV polls etc to give him partial privacy. There he laid in discomfort amidst all the traffic and the ever triggered buzzer going off to signify patients who wanted a nurse to attend their bedside.
No MRI on weekends meant he waited longer for information about his condition and at one point someone even considered sending him back home to Mission. However, as a result of all the delays he eventually was now a PRIORITY! Sick enough to warrant service he went in for surgery. Due to the wait time it was more complicated and there were measures taken to try to deal with progression of his condition. To make a long story shorter he recently underwent a second surgery due to an infection (flesh eating disease) no doubt caused by his first surgery and/or post operative care.
A procedure that should have been taken care of quickly with minimal hospital stay has turned into almost a month of panic and pain!
He has noted that there are good nurses who are trying to work in difficult conditions and there are nurses that maybe should get out of the profession. He has left a newspaper under his bedside cabinet which despite the brief presence of cleaning staff, it hasn’t budged an inch. He bled one day badly which sprayed onto the floor, it took two days before that was even cleaned up. He notes that several people around him have also come in for a surgery and ended up with two or three operations… most likely due to infection. There was one man who hadn’t had his bed changed in a week and they both realized care is different depending who is on shift.
In all of this I realized that the system I once defended is a joke! I was opposed to two tiered health care, secure with the notion that if I buy that hospital lottery ticket or vote for more dollars to be spent on British Columbia’s Health care that money was being spent wisely. Well, not anymore! If I could pay for better care I would do it! To see someone you love suffer, become sicker than they were going in, to watch a person lay in crowded corridor, to see cigarette infested entrance ways with staff and patients alike dumping their cigarette butts about, to see dried blood streaked across a floor in a common sitting area….I could go on but you get the picture.
All this money we are throwing this way isn’t going where it needs too. They have privatized where they shouldn’t and stayed public without proper oversight. They have closed hospitals and reduced availability of service to outlying areas and caused hospitals like Royal Columbian to be busting at the seams. Don’t bother to give me some reason to believe the system is working, I’ve seen with my own eyes multiple examples of failure. There is no preventative care, no immediate care and obviously poor post-operative care.
It sucks and God, forbid I end up in a hospital any time soon!
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Thanks for this Post. By getting the word out that this BC Health Care system is broken, maybe we can change some minds out there that…the Tommy Douglas style of Health care has to be put to pasture in the 21st century.
My brother will get out of the hospital today, June 22. He is by no means healed, however. He will need nurse care once a day to change his dressing around a gaping hole in his side. I won’t go into gory detail.
His ordeal began in the wee hours of the morning June 1st. By my count, that is over 21 days ago. If he is lucky, he will be physically able to work in about 4 weeks. He is still in extreme pain, I suspect he also needs time to sort his thoughts out as well. It has been a very stressful time.
The point I’d like to make is this. There are private clinics that do all manner of procedures out there, whether the Tommy Douglas acolytes want to believe it or not. So, lets get that out of the way. You can go to a private eye clinic, chiropractor, your General practitioner is part of a private business. Some hip and knee replacement surgeries are contracted to private clinics, as well as diagnostics and cataract procedures. The list goes on and is ever growing as BC Health Authorities continue to remove from coverage under MSP, various procedures and therapies; which then must be provided by the private sector. This is not 2 tiered care. This is simply a public/private “delivery” arrangement. And yet, nobody complains. Why? Because it frees up the public system to, supposedly, provide quality care for the sick.
My brother did not receive quality care (unless you compare to care you might receive in a third world country). In fact, I wouldn’t wish what happened to him on my worst enemy. Jennifer already explained the details, but lets look at the impact.
3 weeks suffering under the BC Health Care system. I estimate that at a cost to the system of a $1000 per day + 2 surgeries at around $5000 each, that equates to $31,000, and that does not include the nurse care for the next 1 to 2 weeks. Lost wages by my brother, who works as a Millwright and also runs his own business, a modest estimate of $350 per day, minimum. 21 days out of commission plus another 4 weeks of recovery at least and I estimate lost days of work at 35. $350 x 35=$12,250.
These numbers are a “minimum” calculation. So, what we have is lost wages + health care cost = over $43,250. All for a simple gall bladder surgery. And people wonder why our health care system is so expensive. Lets see: Incompetence, mismanagement, negligence, apathy, laziness, complacency, stupidity…this list can also go on and on. The total lack of logic in which this case was handled is not in keeping with a supposed professional organization of managers, surgeons, administrators and other health care providers. For far less then $43,000, I’m sure a gall bladder surgery could have been performed in a private clinic somewhere, with minimal impact on the patient and the tax payer. Ask yourself this question. If given similar circumstances and offered a choice, would you a) wait 10 days for surgery in a hospital hallway or bed because of a lack of operating room availability or care by those entrusted? or b) receive your surgery immediately? If your answer is “b” then it is your duty to call, write, email or visit your local political representatives and demand that they expand the use of private delivery of health care to include surgeries. These surgeries can still be paid for by our health care system, dare I say, at a bargain of the price of the public system. Afterall, chances are much better you won’t contract “flesh eating disease” and require a second surgery and additional days of care while you lay in agony worrying about how your going to pay your mortgage.
This experience has opened my eyes to what is wrong in Canada. The apathy, the fear of change, the political bias that permeates and stains important issues, enough so that our political representatives fear to make the necessary changes to improve our quality of care. Yes, this is a quality of care and a quality of life issue. Its not a class issue via the whole “2 tier” argument brought on by some special interest groups. Plenty of countries across the planet enjoy a private/public delivery of health care with success. I say we can do the same, and we can innovate in the process. To sit idly by and continue to be victims to our own cowardice and stupidity on this issue will be a death sentence to many and a life altering experience for others.
Demand more, have some courage to think outside the box, and lets be truthful to ourselves about what is really happening out there. Or, roll the dice the next time you get sick.
Its your choice.