Last year we were taken aback by the news that patients waiting for an in-patient bed at the Sturgeon Community Hospital were facing wait times of up to 72 hours. That unacceptable delay was the longest in the province and nearly nine times worse than Alberta Health Services’ target of 8.2 hours.
Fortunately the city has benefited from a number of new hospital and long-term care beds that have come on stream in the past year. Fourteen new beds in Sturgeon’s Medicine Department – for a total of 89 beds – is expected to make a dent in wait times.
Even before the beds were added strides were made toward improvement. The average length of time in the emergency department before admission into a hospital bed decreased to 19.9 hours from 27.9 in 2014-15. While that might be better, it is by no means adequate. Even Alberta Health Service’s goal of 8.2 hours is nothing to write home about.
The recent addition of 12 long-term care beds and 10 hospice beds at Foyer Lacombe will also help by freeing hospital space being occupied indefinitely by patients needing long-term care.
While it is good news that work is being done to expedite care, more has to be done to address the backlog in our health system. Although more beds, more frontline staff and more money does have an impact, ever increasing budgets have shown not to necessarily mean better standard of care.
There is little question that Canada’s health care system is under significant pressure. International and North American-based studies put out by the World Health Organization and the Commonwealth Fund regularly rank Canada low among wealthy nations for delivery. Only the United States performs worse. Countries such as Sweden and the Netherlands which employ a mixture of government and privately-delivered health care ranked high. Unfortunately what works in a tiny nation like the Netherlands might not translate well in Canada. And while Sweden was ranked third by the Commonwealth Fund over all, its quality of care index was worse than Canada’s.
Health care is an emotional and a politically-charged issue, but it is no secret Canada is struggling to meet the needs of patients. What we need is to lay the political rhetoric and ideology aside and have a healthy and mature discussion about possible solutions. There are many models out there ranging from universal care to fully private care and everything in between.
While Canada has geographical and cultural issues that other nations do not deal with, there are lessons to be learned from other systems. Perhaps by examining what works and what doesn’t elsewhere we can develop a made-in-Canada solution that does not penalize rural communities or favour the rich but enhances delivery and saves tax dollars
Perhaps it is time we reopen the dialogue on health delivery in this country.
